CoC "For a Democratic & Socialist Future" (part 1)

[Nathan Newman <newman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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           FOR A DEMOCRATIC & SOCIALIST FUTURE

   Goals and Principles of the Committees of Correspondence
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Published by the Committees of Correspondence
11 John St., Rm 506   New York, NY 10038
Phone:  (212) 233-7151      Fax: (212) 233-7063
E-mail:  cofc@xxxxxxxxxxx
1995

Single copy: $1     Five or more:  $.50 each

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. The People Should Decide
2. Capitalism: Inequality And Plutocracy
3. The Right's Attack On Social Gains
4. For Political Realignment
5. Socialist Vision, Democratic Change
6. Empowering Our Membership



THE PEOPLE SHOULD DECIDE

As we approach the 21st century, we leave an epoch behind.
Our world is changing radically -- in economics and politics
and culture, in science and international relations and
human relations.

We, women and men of all races and national backgrounds who
have joined together to form the Committees of
Correspondence, believe that radical democratization of our
economic and political system is needed to guarantee that
the majority of the people will be the beneficiaries and not
the victims of the dramatic changes of the next 100 years.
This means empowering those who have been systematically
excluded from power in the past: working people, women,
racial minorities, youth.

The different movements of the people have their own
distinct histories, forms, goals and priorities, but they
are not isolated and unrelated. The issues of oppression by
class, race, gender and other characteristics intersect and
their constituencies overlap. These movements must cooperate
to achieve everyday goals, and they are joined by the common
underlying objective of democratizing human relations in the
personal, social, economic and political spheres. Such human
relations require a society based on concern for the well
being of each of its members, respect for diversity and
democratic inclusion in all aspects of life.

This is the foremost challenge of the new epoch. For while
decision-making, ownership and control remain in the hands
of powerful and privileged minorities, the benefits are
reaped by the few. When the majority are marginalized or
excluded, the very fabric of society and nature are put at
risk.

Examples are all too abundant.

  Labor is becoming steadily more productive. But because of
the callous exercise of corporate power, the result for
millions of workers is greater insecurity, layoffs and
unemployment. Chronic unemployment wreaks havoc on the lives
of men, women and children. It takes an extraordinarily
cruel toll in African American and Latino communities,
leaving whole neighborhoods and cities in ruin. In many
industries and across entire regions of the country, the use
of professional union-busters has made the right to organize
into unions and to bargain collectively a fiction. We are
challenged to make the right to work and to an adequate
income the foundation of all human rights, and to assure
that workers enjoy the right to organize and to an effective
voice in the workplace.

It is a sobering fact that we are far from overcoming the
divided soul that has marked our nation from birth. Racism,
conquest and slavery were the realities that accompanied the
process of capitalist accumulation. Racial and national
oppression are the antithesis of democracy. Therefore, the
degree to which the promise of racial equality is made good
is the touchstone of democracy in any aspect of our life.
But over the last two decades, civil rights gains have been
the victim of a furious reactionary counterattack, and by
most measures the gap between African American, Latinos,
Asian Americans and whites is widening. Given the reality
that our nation draws its people from every racial and
national background and will become even more diverse in the
coming decades, achieving a truly multicultural, racially
egalitarian society is a matter of national survival.
Erasing the "color line," to extend W.E.B. DuBois' phrase,
has become the problem of the 21st century.

The still pervasive inequality of women is one of the
gravest violations of human rights. three-quarters of a
century after winning the vote, women still have little more
than a toehold in government office and hardly any presence
in economic decision-making.

Full-time women workers make only $.70 for every male
dollar. Despite remarkable efforts by the feminist movement
and its allies, every indicator speaks to the continuing
inequality of women: more burdened by housework, more mired
in poverty, less medically cared for, less professionally
trained. And women are the special target of fanatical
attacks by the right, which seeks to deprive women of
control of their reproductive lives. Our objective must be
to establish relations based on complete equality for women
in personal and family relations, in the workplace and other
social institutions, and in government.

For two generations, the cold war dominated U.S. government
policy and domestic politics. Economics and ideology alike
were twisted to fit military needs. The cold war
impoverished both "us" and "them" and created a world in
which weapons of total destruction are abundant, but avenues
for peaceful resolution of conflicts are scarce. Yet even
now that there is no plausible military opponent in sight, a
bloated military-industrial-security complex seeks to
maintain its power at the expense of the rest of society. We
are challenged to reorient toward fulfilling human needs and
achieving the real security that only tangible, negotiated
progress toward nuclear and conventional disarmament can
provide. Any attempt by our government to police the world
is contrary to our goal of a just, peaceful and law-governed
community of nations, and would continue to squander
critical resources.

Vaunted free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, amount mainly
to freedom for capital to operate without restriction across
national borders. They permit multinational corporations to
shift production to the lowest wage and least
environmentally protected countries and regions, with no
effective protection of the interests of workers and
communities devastated by these shifts. They pressure
governments to cut services in the name of
"competitiveness." And by putting crucial decisions in the
hands of remote and unelected bureaucracies, they undermine
the control of each nation -- including our own -- over its
own destiny, while dangerously fanning competition, racism
and hostility of each nation toward others. We are
challenged to develop an alternative internationalism based
on solidarity, development and social progress.

Humankind faces one of its greatest threats ever in the
degradation of the atmosphere and oceans and exhaustion of
other natural resources which are the basis of all life. We
are challenged, upon penalty of ecological catastrophe, to
find sustainable and environmentally sound patterns of
growth. We must rearrange our society's values and
priorities to assure that we pass on our common natural
heritage to the next generation intact.

Science is changing how we live and work, what we consume,
how we are entertained, how we think and what we know. It
holds tremendous promise for addressing critical problems of
health, energy, food, communication, transportation.
Scientific advances are critical to an ecologically
sustainable mode of human existence. Yet they can also be
used to snoop, to pollute and to deceive. We are challenged
to bring the genie of modern technology under social control
and make it serve the common good.

Cultural expression, in all its forms, is an enormous and
growing force in the modern world. The information and
entertainment media are being transformed and globalized.
But their development is seriously hampered and distorted by
the domination of corporate interests. A society which
fosters individual and collective development must encourage
and develop a cultural life free from commercial domination
and make it accessible to all people.


  This is the way things are. But is it how they must be? It
has become fashionable in some circles of government and
academia to assert that we have reached "the end of
history." Class struggle, they say, is over and any possible
challenge to capitalism has disappeared. With the collapse
of the Soviet Union, it is claimed, the capitalist system
has won its final and decisive victory. This society may be
tinkered with, but no alternative is possible.

That collapse makes clear that the socialist ideal can not
be reconciled with authoritarian politics and with a state
monopoly on economic and social life. But it does not put an
end to the striving of people for a society based on the
principles of democracy, human equality and guarantees of
fundamental political and economic rights, a society in
which the public good and individual freedom are both
respected.

We are committed to the struggle against class exploitation
and all forms of human oppression. Our perspective is for a
thoroughgoing democratic transformation of society, which we
call socialism.

We are under no illusion that such a just society is around
the corner. But we are convinced that egalitarian and
socialist ideals are relevant to our reality. They are
deeply rooted in our national history.


  We count ourselves as part of a long tradition of American
progressives, radicals and socialists who have endeavored
over several centuries to achieve a more democratic and just
society. This heritage includes abolitionists, women's
suffragists, populists and labor union organizers, the
courageous activists who challenged racial segregation and
the Vietnam war and countless others in diverse movements.
Our nation owes a great debt to such movements for many of
the things we cherish -- individual rights and a tradition
of tolerance, as well as social security, public education,
the minimum wage and civil rights laws.

There has never been a time when this tradition died out.
But there have often been times, as today, when the path
forward has not been clear. We live in a paradoxical time:
just when advances should be possible, many of our past
achievements are under assault and in danger.

We do not claim to have a beacon which will magically light
the way. But we are committed to an open dialog which
explores how to meet today's democratic challenge. We are
convinced that effective answers will emerge from that
dialog.


CAPITALISM: INEQUALITY AND PLUTOCRACY

 Defenders of the present system of class power and
privilege gloss over its systemic problems: cyclical
recessions and depressions; grossly and increasingly unfair
distribution of property and income; persistent racism;
unemployment, insecurity and poverty. They endlessly repeat
the trinity, "Free markets, democracy and prosperity," as
though they were inseparable.

Yet from the unemployment lines and the closed factories,
from the inner-city ghettoes and barrios, from the
underfunded public hospitals and schools, a strikingly
different perspective emerges. While some new high wage jobs
are being created, the average worker in 1993 took home 20
percent less pay in real terms than in 1973. The income gap
between Black and white, which narrowed in the civil rights
era, is widening again. The 1980s saw the creation of
1,000,000 new millionaires, but young people are asked to
accept lower expectations and a lower living standard than
their parents enjoyed. Millions of Americans continue to ask
themselves how a democratic country can be so divided by
class, gender and race.

We attempt without success to reconcile the vast chasm
between our democratic ideals and aspirations and the crying
contradictions of daily existence.

We believe in the ideals of political democracy -- a
universal electoral franchise, freedom of thought and
association and genuine choice among candidates and
programs. Yet in fact we dwell in a political plutocracy,
where the contributions of wealthy individuals, corporate
PAC money and lobbyist influence, with rare exceptions,
overwhelm the concerns of ordinary voters. Our electoral
structure is a scandal, deliberately designed to restrict
popular input and to exclude alternative political voices.
The two-party system fails to reflect the range of social,
political and class interests within our complex society.

Our hard-won democratic rights have been under relentless
right-wing assault, constantly undermined and compromised by
a pervasive system of power, privilege and coercion which
seeks to curtail dissent, silence critics and limit the very
concept of democracy.

We believe in the ideal of human creativity and work, the
principle of a job for everyone who wishes to work, and in
rewarding work with a decent living. Yet at least 10 million
people are without jobs, and involuntary part-time
employment is the fastest growing category of employment.
The minimum wage is one-third lower, in real terms, than a
generation ago. The largest category of the poor is the
working poor. We live under an economic system of elitism
and privilege, in which the upper one percent of all
households have a greater net wealth than the bottom ninety
percent.

We believe in the concept of human equality and equal
treatment under the law, regardless of wealth, gender, race,
religious belief or sexual orientation. Yet we live in a
time of growing inequality between people, of polarization
between super affluent "haves" and millions of marginalized
"have nots."

We believe in the principles of peace and the right of all
peoples and nations throughout the world to self-
determination. Yet our country continues to prop up corrupt
and authoritarian regimes, to finance and conduct military
interventions in the Third World, and to perpetuate social
conflict and repression at the expense of the poorest and
most oppressed people on earth.

We believe deeply that our nation's greatest strength is the
colorful mosaic of its ethnic and racial diversity. Yet our
government actively seeks to curtail immigration from most
non-European countries, and imposes a naval blockade to
prevent refugees from Haiti from seeking asylum on our
shores.

In short, those in power actively seek to curtail, block and
eliminate the sphere of democratic rights. Our current
political system is not designed to address the deep
democratic aspirations of the majority of working people.
Thus our challenge is to transform our society and end the
hypocrisy and elitism which foster alienation and
frustration within the electorate.


THE RIGHT'S ATTACK ON SOCIAL GAINS

 In the 1980s, governments throughout Western Europe and
North America adopted a "neoconservative" model for the
development of economic and social relations. President
Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
advanced an ideology of crass materialism, extreme
individualism and unveiled hostility to the interests of
labor. Their policies denied any "social contract" between
citizens and the state, rejected that people have a natural
right to quality health care, public assistance, shelter or
education. They simplistically atomized the breadth of
society, with its diverse range of human needs, abilities
and creativity, into antagonistic individuals seeking
personal gain. This was the meaning of Thatcher's blatantly
elitist conclusion, "There is no such thing as society." Or,
as President Reagan's budget director David Stockman said,
"The people are not entitled to anything."

Neoconservatism spews divisive social demagogy -- attacking
separation of church and state, fanning racist, anti-
immigrant and anti-gay prejudices.

The neoconservative political perspective views the state as
a collection agency for fleecing the working class,
eliminating civil rights and environmental safeguards,
yielding fewer and fewer social entitlements which address
human needs. It is a concerted effort by big business and
its partisans in government to take back the social gains
won by the working class and its allies in this century.

During the Reagan era, taxes became more regressive. Public
support for housing was reduced to a fraction and
homelessness swelled. Attempts were made to eliminate
universal public education. Enforcement of occupational
health and safety, civil rights and environmental protection
was handed over to declared enemies of those programs.

Powerful forces, abetted by those in the corridors of power,
fanned overt racism, religious intolerance and attacks on
women's rights, particularly reproductive rights.

These "free market" policies have also been held out as a
model for developing countries and for Eastern Europe.
International financial institutions demand that they adopt
similar policies. Yet wherever these policies have been
tried, they have led to social chaos and misery.

These ultra-reactionary policies grow out of changes in the
capitalist economy over the last half century. In every
country, and especially in the United States, military
spending has become the preferred form of government
economic intervention -- a "military Keynesianism." Thus
Reagan's demagogic attacks on "big government" applied only
to social programs, while he raised the Pentagon budget and
quadrupled the national debt.

With the rise of multinational corporations, capital is
formed and operates in a global economic system where
concern for the interests of people, or even of entire
countries, is practically nonexistent. Capital is more
mobile than labor; its reach is greater than any government
entity. The result is a hemorrhaging tax base, with crises
in education and all public services, unprecedented job
losses, insecurity, urban decay, racial polarization and
worsening public safety.

These trends are so pervasive that the time-honored belief
that the next generation will have it better than the
present one is no longer valid. The global effect can be
seen in the continued impoverishment of most developing
countries and the surge of ethnic, national and religious
violence around the world.

The decade-long domination of the neoconservative trend in
the developed capitalist countries has had a deep
destructive impact on government policy and even on the
terms of public discussion. With the defeat of the Reagan-
Bush government and the victory of Bill Clinton in 1992,
many of the more extreme reactionary expressions of the neo-
conservative policies have been changed. The new
administration is more responsive to popular pressure,
especially from its electoral constituency. But at the same
time, many of the regressive social assumptions about the
role of government remain in place. This can be seen in
Clinton's retreat from the Guinier nomination, his refusal
to propose an increase in the minimum wage and his backing
of NAFTA.

The "New Democrats," too, reflect a growing long-term
influence of neo-conservatism.

We embrace the goal of building an independent, progressive
political party. The successful establishment of such a
party requires the creation of independent political forms
as well as dialogue and joint actions with progressives in
all area of politics. In that historic realignment of the
nation's politics, unity and cooperation of the broadest
constellation of progressive forces is essential.

        (See Part 2)


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