*The Flap Over AIG- Fight For A Workers Party

Click on title to link to the Transitional Program of The Fourth International (1938) for some ideas and slogans appropraite for today's struggle against the capitalist vultures.

Commentary

Renegade Eye in commenting on an entry posted here on March 17, 2009 entitled “In “Honor Of AIG- Poster Child For Modern Capitalism” makes a good point about the easily fired up outrage over the giving of bonuses to some pretty unsavory and incompetent executives in light of AIG’s need for a federal taxpayer bailout. The mindset behind this scheme, however, to speak nothing of the general irrationality of capitalism, is only the tip of the iceberg, and not a particularly revealing one, about the nature of modern finance capitalism.

There is a deep plebeian populist streak in American history (not class, at least not in America) that periodically comes out when some egregious actions, such as AIG’s, hit a “hot” button. And, of course, there are no points to be lost by bourgeois politicians (or for that matter, Marxist working class politicians) for ganging up on a few unpopular (for the moment, where was the outrage when stocks were high and house values were rising) overpaid, underachieving Wall Street types. Easy targets, to be sure.

One should be aware though that using the “populist” card does not always accrue to the progressive side. A generation or so ago ex-Governor George Wallace of Alabama was able to gather considerable forces (and cash) for the times around opposition to so-called “pointy-headed liberals” who were allegedly trying to socially engineer society to their liking. Read: keep black and other minorities at the back of the bus. This is the audience that forms the conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh’s audience today. Some of the backlash on the home mortgage crisis has that same quality.

The question asked by these “populists": why did people (blacks and other minorities, mainly, without saying so directly for the most part) who had poor credit, no work history etc. line up hungrily to get a piece of the American dream by purchasing a home (and by the way increase the value, at the time, of the people asking the question)? From our perspective we need to cut across this with a program that deals with jobs and benefits for all, work on points that undermine class/racial/ ethnic and sexual solidarity through a workers party that fights for a workers government. That is a whole of difference from what the bourgeois politicians are feigning their outrage about.


A last point to remember as well. Echoing Renegade it is not nearly good enough to just carp about the “excesses” of capitalism but to do away with it. Every leading politician from President Barack Obama to House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank is crying foul. However, the underlying premise behind their “bailout” plans from the beginning to the present is that financial operations such as AIG are too big to fail. It would send the whole system into a tailspin. This latest crisis of capitalism very graphically brings up the key point that there are no “impossible” situations for the capitalists. They will continue to rule until they are “pushed out”. And that will not be pleasant, if history is any judge. But that is our job. As a first step we must fight under the banner of creating a workers party that fights for a workers government!

*To The Armed Struggle League- Propaganda or Agitation?

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.


Commentary

On Slogans- Propaganda or Agitation?

Every once in a while I get a political communication that baffles me. Today is one of those days. I am looking for help and comments from readers as much as I want to comment on this one myself. I monitor a number of amorphous left wing political sites to get a sense of what is happening in our little corner of the political universe and to get a better slant on events than one generally gets from the bourgeois media (although one should not dismiss that source out of hand, if for no other reason than to know what the buggers are up to). I have commented on other occasions that some of these left wing sites have gone off on more than one conspiracy theory tangent to explain away the impotent of the left but the subject of today’s entry is of different magnitude.

Here is what I am up against upon receipt of a communiqué (in English, although today that means less than it used to) from a group called the Armed Struggle League. Personally, I have never heard of this group, at least not under that name although I do not necessarily keep up with the doings of every grouplet as I have enough to do creating my own propaganda along with my own little grouplet. The substance of the Armed Struggle League’s message is that NOW is the time, due to a myriad of political, social and economic circumstances (the usual laundry list- the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the housing crisis, the commodities crisis, the poor American education and health systems) to form workers councils, use those organizations to struggle for power and defend them by arming the workers. That is where we part company-for the moment.

After giving the communiqué some thought my initial satirical reaction was that here was a group that had been underground for a long time and had only surfaced now that United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his majority had given its imprimatur for the individual right to bear arms. But that was too facile an analysis even for this writer. My next reaction was that the group had been underground for a long time and had only recently gotten the word that the 1917 February Revolution had occurred in Russia and that they were playing catch-up somewhere in the summer of that year. Again, that is too easy an answer. I am going to assume for my own political purposes that this is a rational group and that they are just frustrated (like the rest of us on the extra-parliamentary left) that the masses have not yet risen to slay the monster who is certainly taking a big chunk out of their lives.

Elsewhere I have tried to explain the difference between our general propaganda tasks in defense of socialism in this period and our occasional ability to take the offensive and agitate for certain demands either because the objective situation cries to high heaven for that solution or because the demand has some capacity to get a hearing from some segment of today’s political audience. The clearest example that I can give of this in recent times, and that concerned me personally, was the question of creating soldiers and sailors solidarity committees to link up with the soldiers in Iraq to end the war a couple of years ago when there were openly civil war conditions in Iraq and American military forces, especially the rank and file, were in turmoil. Without going into all the details of how my group decided to agitate around that issue it certainly met, for a time, the two criteria I mentioned above- objective necessity and possibilities of a hearing from political elements. Sometime in mid-2007 that slogan lost its agitational edge as things calmed down in Iraq with the ‘victory’ of the Bush/Petraeus ‘troop surge’ strategy. We still use the slogan as propaganda on selected occasions but we do not highlight it much less agitate around the slogan today.

And that, my friends, is exactly what is wrong with the political prospectus of the Armed Struggle League today. Workers Councils- great idea. Center a workers government around this organizational form- even better. Defend those organizations by arming the workers against internal counter-revolution and external imperialist intervention- ABC’s. But what does all that have to do with today’s “simple” little tasks like getting working people in America to break from their political allegiance to the Democratic Party (and, apparently, in the cases of at least some white workers the Republican Party) and struggling to create a workers party that can fight for a workers government. Not as sexy as invoking the glory days of the Russian Revolution but those are our general propaganda tasks today.

Note: The thought had passed my mind that this message was an act of provocation by some nefarious forces, governmental or otherwise. For what purposes, however, I do not know. The e-mail address I tried to reply to was one of those no reply things. However, since the thrush of the communiqué had some sense of historical knowledge I think this is really the work of some antsy “ultra left” kids. In that case I urge them to think things through- our day will come, it is just not today. If any reader knows anything about this group, has received this communiqué or is a member of the group I definitely want to hear from you.

####Electoral Follies- Musings on "Operation Chaos"-The Presidential Campaign of 2008

Commentary

Periodically I return to edit older blogs for spelling problems, technical glitches and to correct artless prose. Yesterday I was in the throes of such a process when I came upon a blog entitled Musings on Presidential Campaign 2008, dated March 7, 2008. The gist of that commentary, a response to a reader’s question, was to answer why I had reduced the amount of time and energy I had been spending writing on the mind-boggling but essentially trivial American presidential campaign. As described then I have kept on that track pretty faithfully, except I went off the wagon once when there was a tempest in a teapot controversy over the relationship between Obama and ex-Weatherpeople Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. That is until I read a little article about the doings of one ex-drug addict (I assume) and drafter dodger (Vietnam) radio ‘talk jock’ Rush Limbaugh and his role in the just concluded Indiana Democratic primary.

In the real world it has not been a good spring. Fighting continues to rage in Baghdad. There are no timetables for troop withdrawals in sight, much less the necessary immediate, unconditional withdrawal that we fight for. The escalating war budgets, despite harmless Democratic parliamentary antics, keep getting funded. Fuel prices have skyrocketed. Previously ample and cheap food staples are starting to give the world economy the feel of Paris or Petrograd in their revolutionary days. Homeowners, their tenants and others are going to the wall during the relentless mortgage foreclosure crisis. And those are the good days. Into this mix comes one Rush Limbaugh who has presented a very simple idea. In order to give his beloved Republican Party at least the semblance of a fighting chance to win the presidency in November he has decided to muddy the waters of the Democratic Party nominating process by having Republicans, in states where it is permissible, vote in those primaries for Senator Hillary Clinton.

Well, nobody that I know, and that includes some very committed liberal Democrats, would have thought much of this sophomoric tactic except that in Indiana on Tuesday May 6, 2008 it is very possible that the tactic worked. At least the Obama campaign is acting like the small Clinton margin of victory was essentially based on this crossover vote. Of course, for the Obama campaign this meant something. It meant, in the coin of the realm of bourgeois politics, that they could not close the deal on the nomination.

But what about those of us outside and to the left of this process? That brings me back to my original point above from that March blog. Don’t look for relief from those quarters. This whole process now is about mudslinging and some antics that we would not accept from twelve year olds. But it also brings me back to the litany of problems that I presented above. If you want to address the real problems of this sorry old world then back away, way away from the Democratic and Republican Parties, their agents, apologists and hangers-on and come over and help us build a workers party we can call our own. Join us.

Musings on Presidential Campaign 2008

Commentary

Recently I received a communication from a reader asking why, it seemed to her, that lately I have been offering less analysis of the bourgeois presidential elections and doing more book reviews, etc. on obscure subjects like the influence of Quakers, the Second Awakening and women in the rise of American capitalism. Or off the wall commentaries on such frivolous matter as the Iraq war budget, troops withdrawal and the economy.

Interestingly, that comment dovetailed with a trend that I also have observed as I have gone back and edited or reflected on some older material that I have written in this space. Starting shortly before the midterm Congressional campaigns I seriously ratcheted up my commentary in this space under the general theme of breaking with the Democrats, Republicans and Greens. That intensity, more or less, held up until a couple of months ago when I realized that spending time on what is essentially the technical aspects of presidential electoral campaigns, the reason for existence for my political opponents, was not worth the time. Moreover, it was getting repetitive and boring. The time since then has only confirmed that piece of personal wisdom on my part as the current Clinton/Obama smear campaigns against each other has clearly demonstrated.

Do not get me wrong. In my youth this kind of presidential contest would have been like catnip to me, complete with graphs and charts all over the place following the delegate curve. And as late as Hubert Humphrey’s ill-fated presidential of 1968 I would have been up to my elbows in the day-to-day whirlwind of the campaign itself as a participant. But, my friends, these technical trips, and that are what campaigns like this ultimately come down to, prevent one from seeing the forest for the trees. The fight against the Iraq War, the death penalty, saving abortion rights, the struggle against foreclosures and other economic harms are only palely, very palely reflected in these free-for-alls.

As I have repeatedly pointed out before in this space, I see the wind that Obama has stirred up among the youth of all races and others who had previously lost their political compasses as eventually a positive sign for those of us outside and to the left of the Democratic Party. That, however, is only of secondary benefit now to those of us who look through the prism of socialism. I made someone laugh one time when I said our perspective ultimately is - After Obama, Us. My friends, at that time, you will see me making commentaries on politics until the cows come home. Enough said.

*Markin Takes A Turn As Neighborhood Historian-A Working Class Saga

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his 1923 article "habit And Custom" that, I think,helps to under the way forward in trying to develop the class consciousness necessary to bring that socialist future that humankind so desperately needs.

Commentary

Despite the somewhat academic- sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about previously in several earlier commentaries in this space. As I mentioned in them, this space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. This is the fourth part of what, as I will explain in the next paragraph, now has now turned into a five part saga of the fate of a family from the old working class neighborhood that I grew up in. Let me continue that tale.

In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. My invaluable neighborhood historian had related to me that Kenny’s recently deceased mother, Margaret, had assumed they were dead, or that is what she told my historian. I have become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it. Now I know, or will soon know, both their fates. They, in any case, are not dead.

In detecting information about the whereabouts of the two brothers did I need to be a super sleuth? No. Did I need to spend hours poring over documents? No. I have in this space, on more than one occasion, railed against the information superhighway as a substitute for political organizing but for finding public records that lead one to missing people it cannot be beat. That source, and using the old telephone did yeoman’s service here. I have thus now found the brothers, or at least the whereabouts of the oldest one James, Jr. whom I have already interviewed and who has promised me in his cryptic way to lead me to his younger brother Francis. Francis’s story will be detailed in a separate commentary after I interview him.


Probably, after I finish the fifth part of the saga I will rewrite this whole thing as one story to avoid the repetitions inherent in presenting each part in piecemeal fashion. For now though, dear reader, bear with me. To refresh the story for those who make have not read the previous parts let me summarize. In previous commentaries I have mentioned that I had recently (in May 2007) returned to the old working class neighborhood where I grew up after a very long absence. I have gone back a few times since last May to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continues to live there and had related the above stories to me. The first story was about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny. A second in January 2008 recounted the fate of Kenny’s mother, Margaret, and History, written in February 2008, mentioned above, presented the story of Kenny’s father, James. (Check the archives for these three stories.)

My own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. The house was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others including Kenny’s parents, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. That is where I met Kenny and through him his family, including his mother Margaret, his father James and his two brothers, James, Jr. and Francis.

In my teens I had lost track of Kenny who as he reached maturity took the death of a friend who died in Vietnam very hard. The early details of his behavior changes are rather sketchy but they may have involved illegal drug use. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.

Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had a limited education, few marketable skills and meager work prospects. Thus, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago in the mid-1980’s.

Kenny’s woes, as I found out this January, were only part of this sad story about the fate of Margaret and James' sons. The two older brothers were in and out of trouble of one sort or another and were not around the neighborhood much. James Jr.’s story now comes into focus.

I found James, Jr. (hereafter, just James) living alone in a seedy, rundown rooming house in a transitional Boston neighborhood. Strangely, he was more than willing to talk to me about his life and family although he was only vaguely aware of my family, except that he remembered that I was somewhat political. His story, in general outline, is not an unfamiliar one, at least not to me.

Early on James got into petty crime and then more serious crime. As a teenager during the early part of the Vietnam War era, after dropping out of school despite having previously been something of an honors student, he got into enough trouble that he was given a choice by the court system to ‘volunteer’ for military duty or go to jail. He took the military service, for a while. Given orders to Vietnam, he went AWOL not for any political reason but just, as he said, “because”. Later, after time in a military stockade and a civilian jail (for other, unrelated acts) James got ‘religion’-that is he figured the percentages of keeping up his then current ‘lifestyle’ did not add up to a long and happy life.

Based on that street wisdom James became a drifter, grifter and midnight sifter (his words) but stayed on the legal side of the line. The inevitable failed marriages, lost jobs and financial problems as a result of such a lifestyle followed, in their seemingly monotonously natural course. This harsh lifestyle, moreover, ultimately wore down his psychological capacities and at some point he was diagnosed as clinically depressed, unable to hold a steady job and was put on welfare. He has subsisted at various times on day labor wages , welfare of one sort or another, and handouts ever since. That pretty much sums up the balance of his life for our purposes here.

Now, about the question that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in James’s biography warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? The answer James gave-shame. James just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother Margaret berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake. To not have to deal with that, as he started to get into real trouble, James just walked away from his family. His rationale was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I too know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. And I considered my mother something of a saint! James may have stayed away too long and, in the end, broke his father’s heart, but I found nothing inherently absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.

I make no claims that James is a typical working class story, it is not. Nor is this a typical working class family saga. But there are just enough of the pathologies that I have over a lifetime of observation noted about working class existence to make the story serve my purpose. It can serve as a descriptive, if not, cautionary tale about the plight of working people in modern American society. Think about it that way, if you will.

I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven, thus far, to not be necessary as this is a most ordinary story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin, to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids like James and his brother turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remained broken in the baby-boomer generation (our generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ political generation after ours that is not there to give guidance now that today’s youth look like they, at least some of them, are ready to ‘storm heaven’.

As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician. That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country. Think about that.

RUDY AND MITT ON IMMIGRATION-SANCTUARY FOR THE KNOW NOTHINGS

Never let it be said that this writer is not an equal opportunity critic. I have spend most of my time hammering the various Democratic presidential candidates for being weak-kneed and perfidious because, from my perspective as an advocate of a workers party, the kind of people who might be attracted to such a venture are today found, among other places, in the myopic left wing of the Democratic Party. Can anyone really believe that it is worthwhile to try to argue with Republicans into at least moving into the 18th century? That applies, as well, to this current crop of Republican candidates because for the most part they are beyond the pale. However two Republican candidates in particular, Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani, have taken the lead on immigrant-bashing and therefore are ‘worthy’ of comment.

The odd part (at least to the politically naïve) of the controversy between these two worthies is that when they were respectively Governor of Massachusetts and Mayor of New York City they held, at worst, rather benign positions on the question of illegal immigrants. Now Romney has taken to calling Rudy and his regime in New York City a virtual sieve for illegal immigration. And Rudy has replied in kind about Mitt’s Massachusetts. My question is who are these gentlemen trying to woo by acting as this generation’s version of the yahoos of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing (American) Party from the last century. I know for certain that it is not me. Although my father’s forbears came to this country from England one jump ahead of the law in the early 1800’s and my mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine’ ships in the 1840’s I still, in many ways, feel like an immigrant. And that is exactly the point-virtually everyone here came from somewhere else so we better be damn sure of our own ‘green card’ status before we worry about those who have come after us. When the deal goes down I am sure we will find that the current Know Nothings probably have only been here a couple of generations themselves. Forget the illegals I want the names and numbers of those 'newcomers' for immediate action.

As stated above, and as I have mentioned in previous entries, I stand for the proposition that we need a workers party that fights for a workers government. As such I do not have an immigration plan as per Senator McCain and others. That is this government’s problem and I will provide no advice. Today I would define the immigration question generetically, and urge others to think about it this way as well. That means the central thrust should be to fight for full citizenship rights for all who make it here. A big step in that direction is a real amnesty program. In a nation full of generation after generation of immigrants who came here under all kinds of conditions this is what we should be worrying about. Down with the Know Nothings!

DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH THROWS HIS HAT INTO THE PRESIDENTIAL RING

COMMENTARY

BREAK WITH THE DEMOCRATS-AND A CAUTIONARY TALE

In the normal course of events I do not give a tinker’s damn about what bourgeois politician, Democratic, Republican or Green, throws his or her hat into the presidential ring. Whether Evan Bayh is out or Bill Frist is out or Hillary “Hawk” or Obama the “Charma” is in or out or John Kerry is in and out takes more time and effort than it is worth. While I do confess to a sporting interest in the odds on such candidacies and will even wager a small bet on such propositions there is more than enough work for this writer to do propagandizing for a workers party that fights for a workers government. However, during the week of December 12th 2006, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich once again threw his hat into the presidential ring. That interests me, but not for the reasons the reader of these lines might think.

Congressman Kucinich is now an old hand at being the extreme left Democratic Party candidate for President, having made the same run in 2004. With about the same chances. That is, unfortunately, about the same chance as our having a viable workers party candidate for President in 2008. But that is another question for another time. Congressman Kucinich represents, as mentioned about, the most extreme left of the Democratic Party. If we are ever to get a chance for a workers party in this country we will have to peel off those elements of the Democratic Party that the Congressman appeals to. Does anyone really think that our fight today is to peel off those people attracted to Hillary? Or even better, from the Republicans? Grow up, please!

So what are our prospects today? This is the real reason that I am interested in the Congressman. Moreover, I have personal experience with the pressure from the Democratic Party we are up against in our struggle for a workers party. If you will recall the 2004 Democratic Convention was staged here in Boston that summer. Congressman Kucinich did not, for his own personal reasons, withdraw his candidacy until the eve of that Convention so that he was freely accessible at various political functions in the city. At one such function I was able to speak about the need to break with the Democratic Party and develop a programmatic- based party centered on the needs of working people. His response and the response of those around him, not unexpected by me, was that it was necessary to remain ‘viable’ in the Democratic Party if all the good things that working people need are to have any chance of success. I also remember some looks of disbelief as if I was proposing that the Congressman break with the Democrats to lead some revolutionary communist party out in the hills. And that is the rub.

Congressman Kucinich is, as I am, a son of the working class, the dirt-poor part of it, to boot. He is also my near contemporary so that he knows some of the same feelings that I had about being left out of the “American Dream” in the so-called golden days of America in the 1950’s when we were growing up. However, our paths depart at that point. Well, that is politics and such things happen. The point is that if there had been a viable workers party in those days I would not be writing about the Congressman’s marginal Democratic Party campaign today. And in the final analysis that is what this commentary is all about. If we do not fight for a workers party now then the next generation’s Democratic Kucinich will be giving some future workers party advocate the same run around. Let us get serious now.

In the summer of 2006 I wrote a commentary about writing in workers party candidates based on a program for the fall 2006 elections. With the hoopla already starting for the 2008 election cycle I repost that commentary below with that same intention of getting thoughtful leftists to use the 2008 campaign to further our propaganda needs.


A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS IN FOR THE 2006 ELECTIONS.

IN THIS TIME OF THE ‘GREAT FEAR’ WE NEED CANDIDATES TO FIGHT FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT.


FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

All “anti-parliamentarian”, “anti-state”, “non-political” anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist brothers and sisters need read no further. This writer does not want to sully the purity of your politics with the taint of parliamentary electoral politics. Although I might remind you, as we remember the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, that your political forbears in Spain were more than willing to support the state and enter the government when they got the chance- the bourgeois state and the bourgeois government. But, we can fight that issue out later. We will, hopefully, see you on the barricades.

As for other militants- here is my modest proposal. Either recruit fellow labor militants or present yourselves as candidates to run for public office, especially for Congress, during the 2006 election cycle. Why? Even a quick glance at the news of the day is calculated to send the most hardened politico screaming into the night. The quagmire in Iraq, immigration walls, flag-burning amendments, anti same-sex marriage amendments, the threat to separation of church state raised by those who would impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us, and the attacks on the hard fought gains of the Enlightenment posed by bogus theories such as ‘intelligent design’. And that is just an average day. Therefore, this election cycle provides militants, at a time when the dwindling electorate is focused on politics, a forum to raise our program and our ideas. We use this as a tool, like leaflets, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, etc. to get our message across. Why should the Donkeys, Elephants, and Greens have a monopoly on the public square?

I mentioned in the last paragraph the idea of program. Let us face it if we do not have a program to run on then it makes no sense for militants to run for public office. Given the political climate our task at this time is to fight an exemplary propaganda campaign. Our program is our banner in that fight. The Democrats and Republicans DO NOT RUN on a program. The sum of their campaigns is to promise not to steal from the public treasury (or at least not too much), beat their husbands or wives or grossly compromise themselves in any manner. On second thought, given today’s political climate, they may not promise not to beat their husbands or wives. You get the point. Damn, even the weakest neophyte labor militant can make a better presentation before working people that that. In any case, this writer presents a five point program that labor militants can run on (you knew this was coming, right?). As point five makes clear this is not a ‘minimum’ program but a program based on our need to fight for power.

1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET! The quagmire in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (Palestine, Iran) is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is stable. Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militants should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.

But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the ‘popular front’ days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the war in Iraq fight for this position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (ya, those progressive Democrats) who unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. Senator Hillary “Hawk” Clinton desperately needs to be opposed by labor militants. Closet Republican, Democratic Senator Lieberman of Connecticut should not take his richly deserved beating on the war issue from a dissident Democrat. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL. It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less families, can live on the minimum wage of $5/hr. (or proposed $7/hr). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s, go a long way to turning the conditions of labor around.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT. Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with ant-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners!

This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2006 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But, so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY. The Donkeys, Elephants and Greens have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politic today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans and Greens!

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT. THIS IS THE DEMAND THAT SEPARATES THE MILITANTS FROM THE FAINT-HEARTED REFORMISTS. We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists are still reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.

Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Ya, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government. The point is you have got to fight for it.

Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good now. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies at this late date write-in campaigns are possible. ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!