[Marxism] Snarling at tilt of left toward liberal Dems, Socialist Workers Party tilts to GOP mainstream

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The November 24 Militant carries excerpts from an October 17 letter to
Socialist Workers Party branches from National Secretary Jack Barnes
and SWP National Committee member Steve Clark on the California recall
election campaign.

The letter provides more insight into the scope and character of the
rightward shift in the party's view of national and world politics.
Despite this shift (probably in the view of the intiators of the
shift, in tandem with it, but reality will demonstrate otherwise, as
Barnes and Clark say, "over time") supporters of the Militant continue
to play an active part in small but important and relatively militant
labor strikes such as that of United Mine Workers coal miners in Utah.

WHERE DOES SWP STAND ON IRAQ WAR
Would a new reader of the Militant be able to gather that the paper is
opposed to the US war against the forces fighting the occupation of
Iraq?  Would they get any sense that  that the SWP was opposed to the
invasion of Iraq and the occupation? Could they gather from these
articles that the SWP is opposed to the "war on terrorism"?  I think
it would be very difficult, and as a reader for more than 40 years, I
am having trouble figuring out what the Militant's basic stand is -- I
mean the simple for or against.

Buried in an editorial you find the assertion that a future Iraqi
"revolutionary organization" should oppose both the occupation and the
restoration of Saddam.  But there is no indication that this
speculative organization should oppose the occupation's war against
the "Saddamist remnants," nor is there any distinction in priority of
the two assigned tasks.

Until there is a revolutionary organization, however, it appears that
the Militant (which, according to current norms of the SWP's
international relationships, would have to serve as the group's
newspaper) no longer need oppose the occupation.

The Militant denounces antiwar protesters who use phrases about
supporting "our troops" (against the Pentagon, I might add) and for
national chauvinism (many of them are guilty of "anti-Americanism,"
the anti-patriotic Militant charges indignantly). The party calls on
them to heed the words Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  And the
demand for ending the occupation and withdrawing the troops from Iraq
have disappeared from the pages of the paper.

LABEL OF 'IMPERIALIST' NOT AN ANSWER
The softening of the Militant's stance on the war is not countered by
the designation of the "war on terrorism" as imperialist or even by
phrases like "imperialist enemy of humanity." The designation
"imperialist" states a fact about the existing order and not a
political or moral judgment against it.
In the context of the continuing shift to the right in the capitalist
political spectrum, the neoconservatives and others, including some
liberals, have opened a debate on this very subject. They argue that
the United States IS and MUST BE an imperialist power today and that
the US government must much more openly and aggressively act as such.

They are opposed by others, mostly but not all liberals,  who hold
that the world relationship of forces dictates that the  US rulers
continue to dissemble about this before the world, seeking
international support for imperialist wars partly in order to cover up
their real character as US imperialist wars.  They believe that the
Bush course is wrong to dismiss the problems that can be posed by
alienating world public opinion and estimate that the  peoples of the
colonial world retain fighting capacity that can deal unexpected
setbacks to Washington.

The neoconservatives consider such problems to be inconsequential:
world public opinion should be dismissed with contempt. It will be
shaped by the fact of victory. The colonial revolution of previous
decades is now completely exhausted and prostrate as a result of
economic crises that the bourgeois regimes cannot resolve and because
of the corrupt, undemocratic, and unpopular character of most of the
regimes. The US can thus both present itself and play a role as a
progressive, albeit imperialist, force that carries out a civilizing
mission in its own national interests as the defender and extender of
parliamentary democracy, human rights, the rights of women,
secularism, economic progress, and globalization.

As recent articles in the Militant, including this one, clearly
demonstrate, the SWP now holds that Bush, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are
on the right track as far as the interests of imperialism are
concerned and how to advance them.  The liberal critics, they have
concluded, are fools as well as scoundrels.

My opinion is that which of these groupings will turn out to have the
correct policy to advance imperialist interests at this time, or
whether there even is such a thing as a correct policy for imperialism
under current circumstances, will be decided in the struggle of class
against class and oppressed against oppressor.

>From what they estimate to be the success of the Bush policy,  the SWP
leaders have drawn the not particularly logical conclusion that the
duty of the SWP as a revolutionary proletarian party is to aim  all
their fire at the liberal proimperialist and left critics or opponents
of the Bush course (with a few shots across the bow at the despised
"Saddamists" and "Baathists" in Iraq).

The tone of the articles is overwhelmingly DEFENSE of the Bush
administration, presented  from what Barnes, Clark, and the Militant
apparently believe to be the standpoint of  working-class opposition
to imperialism, against the criticisms of  the liberal critics who are
trying to formulate an alternative war policy and offer themselves in
2004 as an alternative leadership for imperialism's offensive.

In 1946, the Socialist Workers Party under the leadership of James P.
Cannon countered the pronouncements of an American Century with the
perspective of a declining US imperialism and the American socialist
revolution as the realistic perspective of this epoch.

Of course the optimistic conjunctural expectations were not fulfilled.
In retrospect, many things can be criticized in the way the American
Theses and related documents sized up the political situation at the
time and the role of the party.

But Cannon's response to the propaganda campaign of his day was
combative, confident, anti-imperialist and revolutionary in spirit.
And this outlook was the fundamental perspective of the party that in
the 1960s was able to take the side of the Cuban revolution, fight
alongside Malcolm X, and play a leading role in the antiwar movement
and the fight for women's rights. This was the perspective that
inspired me in those days, and it still is.  No doubt this played a
part in some of my errors, but it is also the reason I am still in the
ball game.

The SWP recently carried out a major election campaign effort in
California, the first election campaign that had a real mobilization
character that the SWP has carried out in quite a few years. Scores of
youth poured into the state to spread the party's propaganda.  In some
ways this was an attempt to recapture some of the movement spirit of
election campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, but the political framework
was deeply sectarian, propagandistic in the narrowest sense, and
basically isolated from the class struggle. In that campaign, however,
the SWP called for ending the US occupation of Iraq and for getting US
troops out of other countries as well. SWP gubernatorial candidate
Joel Britton wrote a letter to GIs  that included this call.

>From my reading of the  Militant articles on the campaign (I don't
have any other basis for this estimate), the campaign resulted in
little or no organizational gains. (The vote was very low, too, but I
think that was a minor concern).  There appears to me to have been
little or no recruitment and no significant expansion of the milieu.
This campaign had some of the character of an ultimate effort to turn
around at least two decades of decline. The new approach to world
politics seems to me to have been accelerated by the assessment of the
results of this campaign.

Of course, groups like the International Socialist Organization,
Workers World Party, and Communist Party seem to be experiencing some
growth, but, in the view of the SWP, this is not an indication that
they have been missing opportunities but evidence of the gradual shift
of bourgeois politics to the right and the absorptive power of the
Democratic Party and the bipartisan war party.  Only rapid growth of
the SWP and its youth organization (or a massive strike wave, of
course) would be a real sign of radicalization.

For some reason, the new line keeps reminding me of a phrase that Mao
popularized when he was claiming, in the early '70s to keep China out
of cold war conflicts between Washington and Moscow: "Dig tunnels
deep, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony."  The direction
seems to be out of the line of fire.

The perspective being laid out in the Militant today represents the
exact opposite of a  fighting response to the new triumphalism about
the second coming of the "American century"  -- the exact oppoosite of
the fighting response that Cannon and the SWP made to the proclamation
of the first. In my opinion there is a substantial adaptation to
growing imperialist pressure and a shift to the right in political
outlook.

Walter Lippmann wrote about the actual shock and horror that people
who were members of the SWP for many years feel about this phenomenon,
even those who were expelled and/or broke with it decades ago. I
certainly know that I have been feeling this, and -- aside from some
personal difficulties -- it has actually made it a little painful to
think about politics, to post to the list, and to write, including
this item.  I tend to listen to music, stare at the computer screen,
and get kind of pensive.

Having noticed some trends or warning signs of this development over
the years is quite different from actually watching this new
politics -- something worse than sectarianism or abstentionism in my
opinion --  start to emerge. It has certainly been a lot more of a
shock to the system to me than such things as the congressional vote
for the Iraq war money or the official support for the occupation by
the UN and by other states, which were pretty much what I assumed
would happen but seem to have just about blown the minds of the SWP
leadership.

Anyway, what follows are a series of none-too-organized comments and
notes  on the Barnes-Clark article in the November 24 Militant, which
I hope will be helpful to people who think it is important or just
can't help trying to understand the new course of the SWP..  The
comments are followed by the Barnes-Clark article itself to simplify
reference.

**********************************************************************
************************


Clark and Barnes state:

"The course and outcome of the election confirmed what we have noted
from the start: there's no reason to believe the majority of voters in
California, or in the United States more widely, oppose Bush's and
Rumsfeld's unremitting effort to find an effective course in the 'war
on terrorism.' To the contrary."
http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6741/674150.html

Note the cool, neutral, and eminently fairminded way the  SWP leaders
refer to the war on Iraq and other threatened or ongoing wars: "Bush's
and Rumsfeld's unremitting effort to find an effective course in the
'war on terrorism.'"  The phrases are written in a way that avoids
alienating anyone or coming into political conflict with anyone who
supports the war effort.

And contrast the respect with which Bush and Rumsfeld are unfailingly
treated by Barnes, Clark, and the Militant today -- even on the
occasions when they don't endorse Rumsfeld's and Bush's views
outright -- with the bitter snarling that breaks out whenever the
Democrats or the left are mentioned.  No striving for objectivity or
even a modicum of calm in the latter case.

ALL FIRE ON THE DEMOCRATS -- AND THE "SADDAMISTS"
The SWP leaders are clearly educating their movement, from 500 to 800
people worldwide including organized supporters, to talk about the
imperialist war in a more neutral and less antagonistic. Even the
references to the "bipartisan war party" do not necessarily commit the
party to sharp public opposition to the war because

(1) this is just an accurate description of the two party system
today, as the recent near-unanimous votes in Congress to give $87
billion to the administration for the war effort clearly reaffirm; and

(2) the fact that the war policy is bipartisan is, strangely, taken as
a pretext for focusing polemical jabs and denunciations almost
exclusively at liberal Democrats and leftists who are criticizing
Bush's war policy and claiming either to oppose the war or  to argue
for what they claim is a more effective war policy.  To a lesser
extent, the SWP's fire is also directed at the "Saddamist remnants" --
Bush's and Rumsfeld's term, endorsed editorially and without
independent proof by the Militant, for the resistance forces -- who
are attempting to weaken and defeat the occupation regime.

I say that the choice of prime targets is strange because, after all,
the bipartisan war party is  TODAY headed by the Republicans, who
control the White House, the Pentagon, and both houses of Congress.
The Republicans are at this time the clear choice of the US rulers to
head up the war effort, a fact registered among even before the war by
the US Supreme Court decision which assured Bush's victory in the
electoral college.

The Democrats face quite an uphill battle today in trying to win
ruling class support for themselves as the administrators of the
bipartisan effort. The hope of gaining more credibility for their
application for this role is an important aspect of the emergence of
Gen. Wesley Clark as a prominent candidate for the presidential
nomination as well as Howard Dean's twistings and turnings. Their
success cannot be ruled out, of course, because of the possibility
that resistance in Iraq or elsewhere may go beyond what the rulers are
prepared to handle.  The resistance in Iraq has already surpassed
their expectations. The possibility of such surprise setbacks is built
into modern imperialist wars.

DON'T GO TOO FAR
The Barnes-Clark letter asserts that the bipartisan war party's
advance "will continue so long as the rulers don?t try to move too
far, too fast, in their assaults on social conquests won by workers
and the oppressed" since the 1930s.

This is an important change of line and analysis.

The SWP leaders used to argue that Washington tended to be COMPELLED
by the nature of imperialism in a crisis situation to go "too far"
against working people at home and abroad. Now this argument has been
dropped and the new formulation suggests they have the option of
keeping  their attacks on working people in the United States within
acceptable bounds, and thus gaining the freedom to do pretty much as
they wish otherwise for an indefinite future.  The new formulation can
even be taken as a proffer of sage advice to the rulers, who are now
offered the option of avoiding explosive conflicts in the course of
the imperialist wars.

The new formulation is wrong.  There is no way that the rulers can
reliably guard against going too far when imperialist war and class
struggle are involved.

For one thing, it is almost impossible to know what "too far" is in
the real world.  Would the working class fight back against big
attacks on social security? Many people assume that such attacks would
spark massive protests and even a social upheaval and they may be
right.  However, NOONE CAN KNOW THIS UNTIL A TEST IS MADE. The
discussion among the capitalist rulers of whether this would be going
"too far" can only be completely abstract and thus unconvincing to
advocates of giving it a serious try, especially given the economic
and fiscal strains the US rulers and their government are
experiencing.

On the other hand, ground that seems to have been securely won by the
rulers in the offensive of the last decades, and actions viewed as
standard operating procedure by the employers, cops, and so on today
(meeting no substantial resistance) can set off explosions tomorrow or
the next day. There is simply no way of knowing for sure, for us or
the imperialist enemy.

'AT LEAST THEY'RE HONEST'
One of the most striking things about recent issues of the Militant
has been the complete credulity of the Militant concerning statements
of the Republican administration on Iraq.  The Militant, which once
prided itself on being one of the few or sometimes the only place
where you could read about the views of Malcolm X or Fidel Castro, is
beginning to take pride in being one of the many, many places where
you can read the unchallenged views of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. At a recent Pathfinder celebration in London, former SWP
candidate for  California governor Joel Britton stated:

?Never underestimate the imperialist enemy of humanity. Pay more
attention to the pronouncements of U.S. war secretary Donald Rumsfeld
than the liberal media." (And when did the rightist bugaboo "the
liberal media" replace the capitalist media as the target of criticism
and attack?)

But more importantly, Britton, Barnes and Clark, seem to have fallen
for the "at least they're honest" mythology about the right-wing
spokesmen of imperialism.  In forty years in politics I have run into
this from time to time from middle-class radicals. I first recall it
during the 1964 election as a reader of the Black nationalist
magazine, The Liberator.  Several of the contributors argued that
Blacks should vote for Goldwater because "at least he's an honest
racist" in contrast to the hypocrite Lyndon Johnson.

The "at least they're honest" myth says that  unlike the liberal
slimeballs who try to fool workers and soften the sharp edges of
conflict, the right-wing tells the truth, from the imperialist
standpoint.  They are enemies, of course, but at least they tell it
like it is about race, class, war and "peace" and so on.  They give
working people the straight dope, right between the eyes.

Of course, the rightists are just as inveterate liars and cover-up
artists as the liberals.  Although they tell different lies about some
things, there is plenty of overlap as well. The unsupported assertions
of liberals or rightists cannot be taken as proof of any fact.

In my experience this "at least they're honest" illusion has sometimes
been an initial sign that someone is being attracted to the views of
the right, finding their views appealing as compared to the liberal
mush and coming to regard their "frankness" and "honesty" as a sort of
lesser evil.

Taking the word of men you can trust
For the SWP, if Donald Rumsfeld says the United States doesn't need
more troops in Iraq, that settles that.  He wouldn't lie to us, and
such a VERY INTELLIGENT dude certainly couldn't be wrong in his
estimate.

If Wolfowitz says that the active opposition to the resistance to Iraq
is made up of fanatical admirers of Saddam, no further investigation
of the facts is needed.  Assessments by others, including imperialist
spokespeople and others who know about the politics and various social
groupings in Iraq, can safely be dismissed as typical middle-class
wishful thinking.

And if Bush says that US imperialism will "stay the course," opponents
of the war should take the hint. We should drop the demands for
withdrawal and ending the occupation, get off the streets, and stop
fighting the inevitable.  Revolutionary workers should limit ourselves
to walking strike picket lines and, the moment we wake up (before we
put on our makeup), saying a little prayer for a worldwide financial
meltdown, since these are the only things still feared by the slowly
but surely all-conquering US imperialism.

DID CALIFORNIANS VOTE YES ON WAR?
While admitting on one hand that the outcome of vote for the bourgeois
candidates in California
can hardly be considered as either a vote for or against Bush's war
policy, Barnes and Clark tend in fact to interpret the vote as a
virtual referendum on the Iraq war won by the bipartisan war policy.
They proclaim: "The imperialist liberals in the Democratic Party
failed in their effort to defeat the Republicans on everything 'Iraq'
stands for."

This is really  a wild exaggeration of the imperialist liberals'
opposition to the war.  The Militant writes as though Davis and
Bustamante ran bourgeois antiwar campaigns which went down, as such,
to well-deserved defeat.

Given this bizarre overstatement of the determination of the Democrats
to defeat Bush on "everything 'Iraq' stands for," it is little wonder
that the Militant now tends to present the near-unanimous vote for the
$87 billion war fund the White Houses called for as a stunning new
development in US and world politics.

Barnes and Clark's insistence on presenting the California vote as a
vote for the "war on terrorism" marks a big shift in the way the party
interprets the results of US imperialist elections. For example, the
Militant never argued that the voters for war candidates Johnson and
Nixon represented a vote for the Vietnam war in 1964, 1968, and 1972,
and even though the Vietnam war was a far bigger issue in those
elections than in the California voting this year.

This was because of the simple fact that US elections, including to a
large extent how working people vote, are basically controlled lock,
stock, and barrel by the ruling class, and the real sentiments of
workers have very little to do with the outcome. They are not
referenda on imperialist policies because they are aimed at silencing,
absorbing, and stifling all such opposition.  Overall, the California
recall campaign was a good example of this role.

THE TERMINATOR'S LIGHTHEARTED ANTICS
Barnes and Clark  are so intent on defending the Republican wing of
the war party against the Democratic wing that they even rally to the
defense of Schwarzenegger concerning the abuse of women.

Barnes and Clark state: "Schwarzenegger?s implicit endorsement of
recreational use of steroids and related substances, as well as
light-hearted movie-set hanky-panky, echoed elements of the 'cultural
contributions' of the Carter and Clinton administrations
respectively."

This is precisely the argument of the Republican right-wing.  ""Who
cares?  Its just lighthearted hanky-panky and anyway, it's all
Clinton's fault."

During the Clinton administration, however, this was not the stance
the Militant or the SWP adopted.  When Clinton's sexual conduct came
into public view and the Republicans sought to use this to force him
from office, the Militant correctly opposed the impeachment move as
undemocratic and reactionary.  But they also clearly condemned
Clinton's quite normal bourgeois sexist and exploitative treatment of
women.

When I was in the SWP, indulging in what the central leaders of the
party now call "lighthearted...hanky-panky" was grounds for expulsion.

If the party has changed its stance on the harassment of women, that
would be an additional move to the right.  But most likely what has
changed is not the party policy on sexist harassment but the stance
toward the bipartisan war party.  The former unconditional opposition
to all wings of the party is now being replaced by consistent defense
of the Republicans against the criticisms of the Democrats.

I suspect  that when a liberal Democrat is again caught in
"lighthearted hanky-panky" as both Clinton and Schwarzenegger were,
the roar of outraged "proletarian morality" will again rise from the
pages of the Militant.

THE DEMOCRATS ABSORB THE LEFT
"The California recall election once again highlighted one of the
central political conclusions of our movement?s assessment of the
first, the 1992, Clinton campaign," declare Barnes and Clark, "that
the Democratic 'center' was absorbing the 'left,' and that the
converging course of the capitalist parties is shifting very gradually
but steadily to the right."

This statement is correct, although it suffers from the Barnes-Clark
tendency to treat long-standing trends as  spectacular new phenomena
that transvalue all values.  The gradual convergence and shift to the
right of the imperialist parties has actually been taking place not
since the period around 1992, but since the onset of World War II,
along with such tendencies as the growth of elements of "bonapartism"
and  totalitarianization in the state machine.

This long-standing process, which began to be discussed in SWP
political resolutions at least from the time I joined that movement in
1964, was disrupted but not halted by the upheavals and victories won
by the masses in the 1960s and early 1970s, as party resolutions in
those years continued to point out.  The process stems from
fundamental characteristics of imperialism, summarized by Lenin in the
simple and insufficiently thought-about phrase, "Imperialism seeks not
freedom, but domination."

The absorption of the left by the Democratic "center" has been a
quadrennial ritual of US capitalist politics since the 1936
presidential landslide for Roosevelt.  This, too, did not begin with
the election of Clinton. The upcoming election promises to be the most
intense example of such absorption and mobilization since the 1964
campaign of "peace candidate" Lyndon Johnson (who was also a war
candidate as he deliberately  showed by bombing north Vietnam in the
Tonkin Gulf incident and getting a near-unanimous war resolution from
a Democratic-led Congress).

The intensity of this year's "anybody but Bush" campaign is
highlighted by the ferocious pressure on the Green Party to get in
line with the Democrats in the election.  But it is also reflected, in
my opinion, in the more fundamental sense in the tendency of leftists
like the Greens, the International Socialist Organization, and others
who oppose both parties and actually campaign against both, to treat
the Democratic liberals as almost an institutionalized "lesser evil"
which is all too often "silent" or "caves in to" or "too cowardly  to
take on" the Republicans.

REPUBLICANS ABSORB TOO, BUT WHO NOTICES?
However, I am struck by the SWP leaders indifference and insensitivity
to the absorptive power of the Republicans among working people and
even on the left.  They note that Schwarzenegger's campaign -- he is
really, like Colin Powell, a kind of liberal within the Republican
spectrum -- shows the fact that the Republicans are still a "big tent"
party and not just an ideological right-wing party. As Barnes and
Clark point out, Bush strongly backed Schwarzenegger partly in order
to stress that very point.

There are indications that Buchanan, who tried for a decade to build a
radical right-wing party outside of and against the Republicans, is
headed back to the fold.

Yet when it comes to talking about the capacity to absorb left
currents, Barnes and Clark write as though the Democrats were the "big
tent" wing of the bipartisan war party rather than one of two "big
tents" that reach out broadly to get themselves elected and to exploit
and strengthen the hegemony of the politics of the imperialist ruling
class.

Barnes and Clark point reject the strategy proposed by some leftists
of winning away the supposedly working-class, Black et al mass base of
the Democratic Party.  The SWP was not always so categorical.  In the
mid-twentieth century, the SWP often posed the fight for Black and
labor parties as aimed in part at breaking up the liberal-labor-Black
coalition that supported the Democrats. I remember the 1965 political
resolution's opening sentence, which declared that the future of US
politics depended on the fate of the unstable coalition of forces that
had elected Johnson.

CHANGED POSITION OF IMPERIALIST PARTIES
Barnes and Clark say that things have changed, and they make some
points. The former liberal-labor-Black coalition, to the extent that
it still exists, plays a much weaker role in politics.  Voters are
less  loyal to the two parties. (I believe this is also true of
working people who are Black, even though those who vote -- or are
allowed to vote -- still overwhelmingly support the Democrats.)

Between 1932 and 1964 the Democrats won six out of eight presidential
elections. From World War I to Vietnam, the Democrats were the favored
war party of US imperialism.  From 1954 into the 1990s, they
controlled both Houses of Congress.

For now at least, all this has been reversed.  Six of the last 9
presidential elections have been won by Republicans.  They hold both
houses of Congress.  And, for now (how bitter the Democratic bigwigs
must be about this), they have clearly pushed aside the Democrats as
the favored war party of the capitalist ruling class. Since Vietnam,
Republicans have led the the attempt to occupy Lebanon, the attack on
Libya. the mobilization against Iran in the Gulf, and the wars in
Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, the invasion of Afghanistan, the
occupation of Iraq, and the current war to crush the Iraqi resistance
forces. Democrats got to do only the Yugoslav war (plus, it is true,
the unsuccessful raid to free the hostages in Iran, the occupation of
Haiti -- not really a war situation -- and the bombings of Sudan and
Afghanistan).

DOES LIBERALISM'S DECLINE MEAN ONLY LIBERALS SHOULD BE DENOUNCED
Barnes and Clark proclaim: "It has never been the fact, and never the
position of communists, that workers are more prone to be attracted to
the program of imperialist liberalism than imperialist conservatism.
Either way, working people and the oppressed go to the wall." I have
always rejected that common idea on the left, especially when
imperialist liberalism is not associated with any substantial
concessions to the masses.

What I can't make sense of is Barnes' and Clark's placid assumption
that this leads ineluctably to their position that the current current
situation dictates all-out attack on the Democratic liberals and
leftists, who have grown weaker, and a kind of peace of the brave with
the Republicans.

After all, if most workers go along with the war (this is normal at
this stage of an imperialist war although the opposition is higher
than what people with a sense of history about these things would
normally expect), doesn't that mean that the party has a duty ABOVE
ALL to explain  why the war should be opposed by workers and not
primarily to voice confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld and crow over the
real and alleged misestimations of the liberals?

If the Republican party has gained among those workers who vote and
the labor-Black-liberal coalition has become a much less important and
more strictly bureaucratic fixture, doesn't that mean that THE
REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS GAINED IMPORTANCE RELATIVE TO THE DEMOCRATS AS AN
OBSTACLE TO CLASS POLITICAL ACTION BY THE WORKERS THAN THE DEMOCRATIC
PARTY WAS IN 1964, for example -- and I'm talking about political
action at the ballot box and more importantly on the streets and in
the factories.

Barnes and Clark assume that genuinely breaking out of the orbit of
Democratic Party liberalism and rejecting it root and branch, as
Barnes and Clark do, is the same as  escaping the orbit of capitalist
politics.  No, and the SWP's shift in stance is one of the best
current example of this.  Irreconcilable opposition to the Democratic
Party liberals offers no necessary guarantee of an anticapitalist
proletarian course, as the career of Patrick J. Buchanan, Joseph R.
McCarthy, and many others has demonstrated.

INTO ORBIT AROUND THE REPUBLICANS
As the 2004 election approaches, the recent articles indicate  to me
that the SWP may be moving from its former position of irreconcilable
opposition to all capitalist parties, to a "communist" orbit around
the Republicans. Such an orbit can be established, as Barnes and Clark
themselves explain in reference to the Greens and others, even though
one continues to run presidential candidates who criticize both
imperialist parties and reject voting for either.

The SWP today is a small, sectarian organization with no mass
influence.  Its shift highlights the increased absorptive power of
capitalist politics on the "left"  in the upcoming election even
though the SWP boastfully claims to have  established a purely
proletarian party that has nothing in common with "the left." The
"left" is, of course an amorphous collection of "movements" and
organizations, including a number of socialist sects which pride
themselves on having nothing in common with the left.  Today, the
"left" is characterized by the fact that NONE of them represents a
real working-class movement, partly for obvious reasons.

The fact is, of course, that the SWP, like various other sects that
insist that they are the only proletarian force, is part of the left.
It is not a genuine workers party, nor is it a revolutionary movement
like the Bolsheviks or the July 26 movement which is distinguished
from the "left" by its fighting base among the oppressed and
unconditional dedication to making a revolution in its own country.

Although the SWP is a declining sect, I think its developing  shift
from independent working-class politics to what seems to me so far to
be an orbit around the GOP "mainstream" (not the ultra-right)
represents a very small but politically noticeable blow to the fight
for independent working-class political action, in which SWP
presidential and local campaigns and other activities once played a
quite significant part, especially from 1948 to 1984.

LEARNING TO LIVE WITH THE 'AMERICAN CENTURY'
Barnes and Clark state their basic vision of the future this way:

"The war party in the last dominant imperialist power continues its
grinding ascent, its slow, uneven march to hegemony. The road from
Dayton [Yugoslav peace agreement followed by US war]  to Colorado
Springs [NATO ministers' meeting plus war gains} took eight years."

The perspective, despite the claims to the contrary, is of Washington
as the last rising imperialist power. Since they gained ground in the
eight years from Dayton to Colorado Springs, they can only gain more
between now and eight years from now. (I have become convinced that
all prophecy, even the most radical or the most hallucinatory, is
simply the uninterrupted projection of the present into the indefinite
future.)

The name of Cuba has not entered into any of the party writings in
this discussion yet, but this projection clearly assumes the growing
isolation, decline and defeat of the Cuban revolution.  At the same
time, it takes no account at all of the continued attractive power of
Cuba as a worldwide center of resistance to imperialist domination.

Given the lack of mention of Cuba, it is natural that no other workers
state is taken into consideration.  They are important ones in world
politics: Vietnam (with Laos closely associated), North Korea, and
China.

I suspect that 13 years of insisting on the proletarian character of
the states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where
workers' and peasants' class power in any form had completely
disappeared, has led to a massive undervaluing of this institution
where it still exists in reality -- countries where broad sections of
the masses still feel a stake in defending the expropriation of the
capitalists, the breaking of landlordism, and independence from
imperialism. And I suspect it is not entirely accidental that all the
surviving workers states were products of the colonial revolution.

The SWP relearned from Fidel and Che that the existence of a workers
state offers no guarantee that socialism will come to fruition, and
does not even create an automatic tendency in that direction. Barnes
and Clark seem to have concluded from this that a workers state really
isn't worth much as a fighting instrument against US hegemony unless
it has a flawless revolutionary leadership, but this is false. But not
only Cuba under communist leadership, but the Soviet Union under
Stalin in World War II, China during the Korean war and cold war,
Vietnam, and north Korea today have all proven otherwise.

What would "world hegemony" mean if Washington cannot smash these
states? It would be something quite other than real world hegemony.

And that is only one category of obstacles that Washington faces.
Another is the continuing reality of national democratic revolutionary
struggles in the former colonial regions that can open the road to
socialism. And the resistance in countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan -- yes, including by sections of the old ruling groups --
against a US imperialist and NATO takeover. (The correctness of
Trotsky's stand in defense of Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie
against Italy has not been invalidated by the fact that the US carries
the war banner of  democracy rather than fascism or by claims that
this or that "stunning" vote in Congress or the UN has created a Brave
New World.) There are the interimperialist conflicts, which are
continuing to grow.  And there is the class struggle in the
imperialist countries themselves.

The question of US world hegemony will be decided in struggle and only
in struggle.  The simultaneously demoralized (in the prospects of
their class), and  confident (in the prospects of the -- for them, I
believe -- magnetically attractive US capitalist class), are of
absolutely no value whatever in orienting workers in the fights to
come.

FEEBLE HOPES OF PEOPLE WHOSE HOPES ARE FAILING
Barnes and Clark offer a reed to buoy their clearly drowning
revolutionary perspective: "Washington faces one undefeatable enemy:
world capitalism?s inevitably deepening depression conditions and?over
time, but just as inevitable?resistance to its effects among the
toilers that will bring reinforcements, make possible the stripping
away of illusions, and increase class solidarity and political
consciousness as the consequences of the mounting social catastrophe
unfold."

For now and the indefinite future, in other words, nothing can stymie
the grinding rise of US imperialism (which, by the way, is never
referred to as "declining" as has been customary in the past and which
is also true). The working class, starting from an utterly devastated
Ground Zero, will slowly but surely undertake resistance to one or
another degree.

Again, where does Cuba, where the working class hardly has to begin
from scratch to strip away illusions and so on, fit in here? Where
does Cuba fit in with the decline of Marxist culture?  Hasn't Marxist
culture been tending to grow stronger and deeper there?  If not,
Barnes and Clark should explain what they think is actually taking
place in Cuba, and what role they think the Cuban leadership is
playing in the world today.

Can the SWP bank on  deepening depression to save the day? Won't that
multiply the ferocity of the US drive to world domination?

This is the sterile "confidence" in the working class of these
perennial super-optimists, who insist that the US working class has
been at center stage in politics for 25 years, that the United States
was defeated in the Cold War, and that the proletariat still rules  in
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from Vladivostok to Berlin.
All that plus Iraq and Afghanistan is supposed to add up to an
inevitable grinding rise of Washington to world domination!  This
makes no sense at all.

In contrast to both the SWP's triumphalism about the past and their
bowing to the imperialists' triumphalism about the present, I see no
justification for imperialist triumphalism today,  and no basis for
triumphalism on the part of the workers, peasants, and oppressed
nations of the world, either. The relationship of forces is, in my
opinion, in a great deal of flux.

But there is no basis at all for Barnes and Clark's wretched defeatism
and shallow gradualism about the class struggle.

For instance, Barnes and Clark assume that the slow process of gaining
experience and stripping illusions begins from NOW, and will take
place "over time,"  but hasn't this been taking place for a couple of
decades now?  Who knows how far along the process has already gone in
the United States or elsewhere?  When big struggles open after such a
long retreat, regrouping, radical recomposition, and training (such as
the working class in the United States has been experiencing, for
example), the outbreak always takes place by surprise and often not as
a slow, step-by-step buildup of struggles from small to big but in  a
sudden large outbreak

We can't count on such battles opening up  in a few months or a year
or two years, but it is also a big mistake to assume that they CAN'T.
We have to live with the reality of not knowing, but Barnes and Clark
(who have a bad case of the prophecy bug) seem to be much more
comfortable with predictions of years of defeat ahead than with the
simple reality of not knowing exactly what is going to happen and
when.

We do not, for instance, know that the US will be forced to leave Iraq
over the next couple years by a growing resistance. But we also sure
as hell don't know that they won't. Not speeches by Rumsfeld or Bush,
but only the struggle can answer this.

One thing we can know is which side we're on TODAY, about which Barnes
and Clark -- who can see the future or at least a future much more
clearly than I can -- are no longer at all clear.  I am against the
occupation of Iraq, opposed to the war against the resistance, for the
immediate withdrawal of US troops, and for the UNCONDITIONAL
restoration of Iraq's sovereignty. I think that demonstrations that
raise these demands are progressive no matter what participants may
also say about "our troops," "Americanism," or the French.

I think Barnes and Clark should take their eyes off the crystal ball,
divert their attention from tactical assessments lifted from the
writings and statements of the Secretary of Defense, and tell their
readers where they stand on THESE matters.
Fred Feldman














**********************************************

The Militant  Vol. 67/No. 41           November 24, 2003


Behind the outcome of California election Schwarzenegger victory:
victory for Bush, victory for bipartisan war party
(feature article)

In this year?s state and local elections, the Socialist Workers Party
ran 16 candidates in 10 states, winning ballot status for 12 of them.
In California the SWP candidate for governor, Joel Britton, was joined
by Young Socialists for Britton and other campaign supporters in
promoting the party?s Marxist program during the contest to recall and
replace Democratic Party governor Gray Davis.

The following is an excerpt from an October 17 letter to local
branches of the Socialist Workers Party by SWP national secretary Jack
Barnes and Steve Clark, a member of the party?s National Committee.
Published in a party bulletin under the title, ?Communist Program,
Communist Practice, and Communist Election Campaigns,? it is being
discussed by members of SWP units and Young Socialists across the
country. The portion below places the outcome of the 2003 California
gubernatorial recall election within U.S. and world politics as they
are unfolding today.

The letter below was written as an aid to evaluating these efforts,
and in preparation for the party?s 2004 presidential campaign. These
themes will be presented and discussed further at a December 14 public
meeting in New York City to launch the new headquarters of the
Socialist Workers Party and New York Pathfinder Bookstore, and to
discuss central experiences of working-class resistance and political
opportunities.

The excerpt below is reprinted by permission. Copyright ?© 2003,
Pathfinder Press. Subheadings are by the Militant.



*****


BY JACK BARNES AND STEVE CLARK The outcome of the California recall
election was a victory for the Bush administration, for the war party,
and a blow to imperialist liberals and thus to their radical
hangers-on, who orient and defer to what the Green Party candidate
called ?the base of the Democratic Party.? (For the uninitiated, the
image of ?the base? is supposed to be a Popular Front graphic of
rainbow-united, steroidal ?workers,? not very bright but ?salt of the
earth.? For the ?leaders,? the image is progressive congressional
staffs; militant trade union officials; the apparatuses of the larger
Black and Latino organizations; spokespersons of coalitions of ?social
concern?; the owners of profitable ?progressive? enterprises holding
lucrative contracts granted by politicians in local, state, and
federal governments; and all those ?of talent? who are about to be
welcomed into the big tent of leadership status in the two-party
bordello.)

Governor Gray Davis was recalled by a 55 percent vote. Republican
Arnold Schwarzenegger fell just short of an absolute majority, and
Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante won 32 percent of the vote.
Altogether the Republican vote?Schwarzenegger, plus conservative state
senator Tom McClintock?totaled 62 percent of the ballots cast. The
Democratic vote?Bustamante, the Greens, and Arianna Huffington?came to
36 percent.

Bush, who lost by a big margin to Gore in California in 2000, made
known his preference for Schwarzenegger in early August, soon after
the Austrian-American?s announcement. This initiative by Bush was
unusual for a sitting president in a race that bore many similarities
to a primary election, with several prominent Republicans (McClintock,
William Simon, and Peter Ueberroth) in addition to Schwarzenegger
contending at the time. The president?s nod, moreover, came well after
Schwarzenegger had reaffirmed verbal support for abortion rights,
civil unions for gays, legalization of medical marijuana, and gun
control legislation?all sacred battle issues for the Republican
?social right,? and all issues on which Bush himself speaks softly on
the ?right? side, as he concentrates patriotic fire mobilizing the
people of all parties on behalf of ?America?s global war against
terrorism.? Schwarzenegger?s implicit endorsement of recreational use
of steroids and related substances, as well as light-hearted movie-set
hanky-panky, echoed elements of the ?cultural contributions? of the
Carter and Clinton administrations respectively; it lost
Schwarzenegger few Republican votes and made him simpatico to more
than a few Democrats.

As Gray Davis spent the final days of the campaign rushing around the
state with Arianna Huffington, trade union officials, Albert Gore, and
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who could barely smile, Schwarzenegger appeared
on platforms with a confident and enthusiastic Eunice Shriver, sister
of John F. Kennedy. (A happier and calmer Maria never left his side,
and she took several opportunities to proudly affirm that she remained
a lifelong Democrat backing a Republican who you could trust.)
Schwarzenegger?s appeal was not a ?populist? one, as a few bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois commentators confusedly remarked. Instead, he
tried to create the aura of a Republican ?fusion? campaign?one modeled
not on Fiorello LaGuardia or John Lindsay,1 but on Reagan and his
Democrats.

The imperialist liberals in the Democratic Party failed in their
effort to defeat the Republicans on everything ?Iraq? stands for, too.
In fact, it backfired on them. To the degree the issue had any effect
on the outcome of the campaign, it worked in Schwarzenegger?s favor.
He went to Iraq at the opening of the gubernatorial race to exploit
some photo opportunities (and promote his new movie). But the few
times the issue came up during the campaign, Schwarzenegger backed
Bush administration policy while reminding critics that he was running
to solve ?the budget crisis? in Sacramento, not Baghdad. The course
and outcome of the election confirmed what we have noted from the
start: there?s no reason to believe the majority of voters in
California, or in the United States more widely, oppose Bush?s and
Rumsfeld?s unremitting effort to find an effective course in the ?war
on terrorism.? To the contrary.

The bipartisan war party The wind-up week of campaigning and
subsequent week of celebration by the unfolding Schwarzenegger
alliance accidentally coincided with the best two weeks for Washington
?s ?global war on terrorism? since the military victory in Baghdad
last spring: the United Nations Security Council?s codification of the
existing fact, the ?soft? U.S. protectorate in Iraq; the stunning
unanimous character of that vote?including Syria?showing the
effectiveness and partial legitimatization of Tel Aviv?s assault on
the outskirts of Damascus; Tokyo?s pledge to Washington not only of
financial backing but troops; the launching of NATO?s rapid reaction
force less than a week after its ministerial war-game meeting in
Colorado Springs; Gordon Brown?s public offensive on the necessity of
the ?globalization? (in fact, the ?NATO-fication?) of the European
Union;2 and the bending to the administration?s course in Iraq,
however grudgingly, by opinion columnists from the New York Times to
Patrick Buchanan (??We?re? there, so what should ?we? do??). It was
capped off by the bipartisan adoption in both houses of Congress of an
$87 billion appropriation for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq
and Afghanistan. All this shows the impotence of ?left? imperialist
opposition to the ?global war against terrorism? as a successful
electoral strategy against the Bush administration and its allies.

The war party in the last dominant imperialist power continues its
grinding ascent, its slow, uneven march to hegemony. The road from
Dayton to Colorado Springs took eight years. But a U.S.-dominated,
globally oriented new-NATO, light on its feet, deployed without
preliminary parliamentary debate, would the beginning at the same time
of the transformation of imperialist armed forces throughout Europe.3

Washington faces one undefeatable enemy: world capitalism?s inevitably
deepening depression conditions and?over time, but just as
inevitable?resistance to its effects among the toilers that will bring
reinforcements, make possible the stripping away of illusions, and
increase class solidarity and political consciousness as the
consequences of the mounting social catastrophe unfold.

Democratic ?center? absorbs ?left The California recall election once
again highlighted one of the central political conclusions of our
movement?s assessment of the first, the 1992, Clinton campaign: that
the Democratic ?center? was absorbing the ?left,? and that the
converging course of the capitalist parties is shifting very gradually
but steadily to the right. That trend will continue so long as the
rulers don?t try to move too far, too fast, in their assaults on
social conquests won by workers and the oppressed through the rise of
the CIO social movement in the 1930s and by the mass proletarian-based
struggle for Black rights, related fights by Latinos, and the women?s
movement and its worldwide repercussions, initiated in the 1960s and
early 1970s. The Supreme Court will remind them if they do.

In face of the accelerating capitalist crisis and stepped-up assaults
on the living standards and social conditions of working people and
the middle class, the results in California weakened illusions among
?progressives? that the Democratic Party has a lock on statewide
elections in that state. Fifty percent of union members voted to
recall Davis, as did some 30 percent of Blacks and more than 40
percent of Latinos (in face of Schwarzenegger campaigning aggressively
against the bill granting driver?s licenses to ?illegal immigrants,?
that is, to drivers who can?t vote). Less than a year ago Davis had
won two-thirds of the vote among union members and Latinos. The
combined vote for Schwarzenegger and McClintock by union members on
October 7 was substantially higher than for Republican candidates in
most past California elections, and the vote from Latinos and Blacks
was no smaller a percentage than in most previous races.

This outcome also demonstrated once again that workers are not loyal
to the ideology of imperialist liberalism. That was not even true
between 1936 and 1948, the high tide of the Roosevelt administration?s
?New Deal? and the Truman administration?s initial ?Fair Deal,? much
less today.

Party loyalty shallow In this regard, the campaign wrap-up editorial
in the October 27 issue of the Militant slipped in saying that,
?Despite Davis?s very liberal record over the past two years, half of
union households voted to oust him? (emphasis added). It has never
been the fact, and never the position of communists, that workers are
more prone to be attracted to the program of imperialist liberalism
than imperialist conservatism. Either way, working people and the
oppressed go to the wall.

In the absence of any mass proletarian leadership, working people
seldom vote on the basis of ?program.? To the degree workers vote?and
the ?electorate? under bourgeois democracy is disproportionately
weighted toward the middle class and professionals?they look above all
for a possible road forward in face of the concrete conditions of
daily life under capitalism. In doing so, they?re forced to choose
between the twin parties of the exploiting classes, or occasionally a
short-lived ?third party? offshoot of one of them. And if ?our
 country? is fighting a war, they have to be very convinced before
switching from the incumbent ?commander in chief.?

So-called party loyalty is shallow in U.S. capitalism?s two-party
system, relative to imperialist countries with mass ideological
parties?be they labor, social democratic, Stalinist, or Catholic- or
Protestant-based. This fact has served the U.S. rulers well when their
social system is under strain. The fact that the chief executive has a
fixed term is a stabilizer underlying this party fluidity. A recall,
like impeachment, is never anything but a hesitantly used last resort
for the rulers. But the pornographication of politics and its sabotage
of civility may well increase the use of these forms, and with them
space for destabilizing radical right demagogy within bourgeois
politics.4

Given what had been done to working people by the Davis administration
in less than a year since he was re-elected, the Democrats?
election-time pitch fell on deaf ears among growing numbers confronted
by the insecurity of rising joblessness, onerous debts, rising direct
and indirect taxes, and devastating cuts in health benefits, pensions,
unemployment insurance, workers compensation, recreation and training
for prisoners, education, and other social programs. Liberals and
their middle-class radical camp followers were reduced to warning of
?the horror? if Davis were recalled and Herr Schwarzenegger swept into
Sacramento. But millions of urban and rural working people in
California were already in the midst of what they were living as an
unfolding Davis-Bustamante-induced horror.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

1Fiorello LaGuardia, Republican mayor of New York City (1933-45), ran
on a ?fusion ticket? with broad bipartisan backing. His campaigns for
a second and third term were actively supported by the labor
officialdom, the Communist Party, and the so-called American Labor
Party, formed in 1936 by the CP and a layer of union bureaucrats to
divert class-conscious workers into voting for capitalist candidates
such as LaGuardia and President Franklin Roosevelt. Although LaGuardia
publicly repudiated the CP?s endorsement in the 1941 contest, the
Stalinists kept their lips firmly planted on the ?Little Flower?s?
nether parts through Election Day and beyond.

John Lindsay, the first Republican mayor of New York since LaGuardia,
lost the Republican Party primary in his race for a second term in
1969. He was re-elected on the Liberal Party ticket and switched his
party designation to Democrat in 1971.

2Gordon Brown is the second-ranking official after Anthony Blair in
the Labour Party government of the United Kingdom. In an article in
the October 16 Wall Street Journal, Brown argued that the future of
the European Union and its member governments depends on acceptance by
their leaders of ?globalization? and ?cooperation not confrontation
with the U.S.? Brown has recently stepped up his drive to replace
Blair as a slightly less ?pro-European? leader of the Labour Party.

3The Dayton accord was signed in late 1995 by Serbian, Croatian, and
Bosnian forces at the conclusion of U.S.-sponsored talks at the
Wright-Paterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Underlining U.S.
imperialism?s place as the dominant ?European power,? the accord laid
the basis for Washington to send an occupation army of some 60,000
NATO troops into Bosnia, including 20,000 U.S. soldiers (1,500 of whom
remain there to this day). The Dayton accord was imposed by the
Clinton administration in the wake of devastating bombardment and
shelling of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO forces in 1995, and following
de facto sabotage by U.S. imperialism of repeated ?peace initiatives?
in the Balkans over the previous half-decade sponsored by European
powers, especially Paris and Bonn.

Colorado Springs, Colorado, was the site of the October 2003 meeting
of defense ministers of 19 NATO member countries and 7 prospective
members. Hosted by U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, almost half
the gathering was devoted to playing a war game at the Schriever Air
Force Base. The game consisted of NATO forces responding to a threat
by ?terrorists? of a missile-borne chemical attack on a European
country. Pointing to the need for a transformation of armed forces
across Europe, Britain?s Lord Robertson, NATO?s outgoing
secretary-general, stated in Colorado Springs: ?Out of 1.4m non-U.S.
soldiers under arms, the 18 non-American allies have about 55,000
deployed on multinational operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and
elsewhere and yet they feel overstretched?. That is a situation that
is unacceptable.?

This pornographication and breakdown in civil discourse in bourgeois
politics is discussed in greater detail in the book Capitalism?s World
Disorder: Working Class Politics at the Millennium by Jack Barnes, as
well as in the article by Barnes in issue no. 10 of New International
magazine entitled, ?Imperialism?s March toward Fascism and War.?

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