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The Militant - October 19, 2015 -- Timeliness, resistance, politics:
road for Socialist Workers Party
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 37 October 19, 2015
(feature article)
Timeliness, resistance, politics:
road for Socialist Workers Party
Youth seek action, ‘mind-stretching’ discussion
BY JOHN STUDER
As resistance grows among working people to the slow-burning capitalist
depression, there are expanding opportunities for the Socialist Workers
Party to
join with other workers in fights against economic, social and political
assaults by the bosses and their government. The SWP can expand the
reach of its
press, books and election campaigns and draw fighters toward the party
and its revolutionary working-class program. That was the central
conclusion of
the Sept. 19-22 meeting of the party’s National Committee and an
expanded meeting of the Political Committee the next day joined by
leaders of Communist
Leagues from several countries.
The worldwide crisis of capital has no end in sight, and the propertied
rulers are stepping up their assault on the working classes. The
percentage of
the working class with a job has fallen to a decades-long low;
temporary, part-time and agency work is everywhere; and wages are
stagnant, Jack Barnes,
SWP national secretary, said in his political report.
Decades of refusal by the trade union officialdom to organize workers,
and to use union power against attacks by the bosses and government and
in support
of other social struggles, have led to defeats and sinking membership.
The labor bureaucracy’s dependence on the political parties of the
employing class
has shut workers off from developing an independent working-class
political road forward.
Actions against bosses, cop brutality
A new wind is blowing today. Young fast-food workers, and those working
for airport contractors, in home health care, for Walmart and in other
minimum-wage
jobs are striking and marching, demanding $15 an hour, regular work
schedules and a union. They are having an impact, forcing bourgeois
politicians in
city and state governments across the country to raise the minimum wage.
And they are inspiring others to stand up and fight.
Two-thirds of autoworkers at Fiat Chrysler rejected a proposed deal Oct.
1 that would have left standing two-tier wage divisions that are a blow
to the
unity of the 36,000 workers there. An overwhelming majority of workers
at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway voted down a proposal last year
promoted
by officials in the SMART union’s Transportation Division that would
have allowed the bosses to reduce train operating crews to one person.
Derailments and deaths — from Lac-Mégantic in Quebec to Amtrak in
Philadelphia — are the result of the rail bosses’ offensive. Management
tries to shift
the blame onto the backs of the very workers they are attacking. The
party, including through use of the Militant, can help lead in winning
support for
the defense of Tom Harding and Richard Labrie, Steelworkers union
members who face frame-up charges for the 47 deaths in the Canada
derailment.
Many of these developments were outlined in a report on party members’
work in the unions and labor battles given to the meeting by SWP trade
union director
Norton Sandler.
Because of the refusal of labor misleaders to organize, many
working-class fights are finding new forms, like the growing number of
battles for $15 and
a union. In New Mexico, immigrant workers at car washes and other
low-paying jobs, who have been ignored or brushed aside by union
officials there, have
formed worker associations to fight superexploitation, wage robbery and
abuse. They have won a number of victories, including rulings by the
National Labor
Relations Board that their organizing activity is protected by the law.
Young people, led by youth who are African-American, are leading fights
against cop murders and brutality. These battles and mini-rebellions
have pushed
the rulers back. They are taking steps to rein in their police. Cops
like those who killed Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Walter Scott in
North Charleston,
South Carolina, have been fired, jailed and indicted across the country.
Outrage over the refusal of grand juries in several areas to file
charges against the cops, including in the killing of Eric Garner in
Staten Island, New
York, forced Gov. Andrew Cuomo to grant special powers to the state
attorney general to step in and take charge of cases where cops kill
unarmed people.
Some in the Black Lives Matter movement and many middle-class radicals
close their eyes to these developments or argue they aren’t happening.
Telling the
truth, they believe, will undercut the fight against police abuse. But
recognizing the real impact the movement is having is necessary to get a
hearing
and fight effectively.
That was shown this summer by the revulsion and dignified response among
working people of all skin colors to the political assassination of nine
African-Americans
in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South
Carolina, by a Nazi-minded individual named Dylann Storm Roof. That
overwhelming
response forced the rulers to take down the flag of terror against the
Black-led movement that overthrew Jim Crow from the state Capitol, and
to remove
that hated emblem from items on store shelves across the country.
These social struggles and the developing labor battles reinforce and
strengthen one another, the National Committee concluded. They provide
growing opportunities
for workers — Black and Caucasian, immigrant and native-born, employed
and jobless — to come together.
The Washington Post tried to paint an opposite picture of Caucasian
workers in the South in a Sept. 12 article headlined “An American Void,”
focusing on
youth in South Carolina who knew Dylann Storm Roof. The feature-length
smear job painted the youth and their families as white trash, whose
lives center
on playing violent video games, smoking tobacco and marijuana nonstop
(complete with a close-up photo of an ashtray), constantly buried in
electronic devices,
who don’t read and take no interest in anything outside their trailer park.
Their biggest crime, the Post seems to suggest, is that they offer a
place to crash for friends or acquaintances who need one, Black or
white, including
Roof for a few days. For doing so, Joey Meek, one of those highlighted
in the article, has been arrested by the FBI on frame-up charges that he
lied and
didn’t give them information about Roof.
Capitalist ‘world order’ unravels
These developments take place as the capitalist “world order” put in
place under U.S. hegemony following World War II is coming apart.
Countries in the
Middle East patched together by the imperialist powers are shattering
under war and social conflict. China is posing a political and military
challenge
to Washington’s domination in Asia, as its economic strength grows.
Relations are straining in the European Union, and powers from Germany
to the U.K.
are slashing their militaries.
In response, the U.S. rulers have sought a new line-up of alliances and
trade pacts, seeking to shore up their declining power. These efforts
include “resets”
with Moscow and Tehran, agreement with these regimes on efforts to
achieve some stability in Syria and Iraq (as well as in Ukraine and
Russia’s “near abroad”
in eastern Europe), and the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership
and plans for a similar trade deal with European rulers.
Each of these steps contain unpredictable but inevitable threats of
friction and conflict. The first fruit of the “resets” has been
decisions by Moscow
and Tehran to send bombers, tanks and troops into Syria. The rapidity
with which the Vladimir Putin government in Russia has moved to shore up
the murderous
government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria — bombing opponents of the regime
and violating Turkish airspace — shows the deals engineered by the Obama
administration
have unforeseen and dangerous consequences for working people there and
the world over. And they spur countermoves by Israel, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and
other regimes that can cause new conflicts to emerge.
One consequence of the carnage unfolding in Syria is the displacement of
more than half its population, with millions forced into camps and towns
in Turkey,
Lebanon and Jordan. Thousands with greater means are seeking refuge in
Europe. Wherever they end up, they are confronted by riot police, razor
wire fences
and abuse from the capitalist rulers.
For decades, labor’s misleaders have refused to fight for working-class
unity; to combat discrimination, deportations, and attempts to
criminalize immigrants;
and to organize working people into unions, whatever their origins. This
fight is key for the working class, to draw immigrant workers together
with native-born
in the growing class struggle in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The grinding capitalist economic, political and moral crisis, the
weakening of Washington’s imperialist dominance, spreading conflicts and
growing workers’
resistance tear at the fabric of the Democratic and Republican parties,
spawning campaigns like those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
At the same time, the Socialist Workers Party finds greater interest in
its working-class program, from demands to meet the immediate needs of
working
people to support for revolutionary Cuba to the need to break with the
bosses’ parties and construct a labor party based on the trade unions.
These and
other pressing questions for working people will be at the center of the
2016 SWP presidential election campaign.
Cuban Revolution stronger
The Dec. 17, 2014, announcement by Washington that it was opening the
door to diplomatic relations with Cuba reflects the attraction and
staying power
of the socialist revolution made by workers and farmers there, National
Committee member Mary-Alice Waters said in a report on party-building
work and
defense of the Cuban Revolution. In face of the failure of its
55-year-long course to overturn the revolution through armed violence,
diplomatic quarantine
and economic strangulation, Washington needed to shift tactics in its
efforts to achieve this goal. The U.S. rulers and their course toward
Cuba faced
increasing isolation in Latin America, as well.
The Cuban Revolution is a living example of what workers and farmers can
accomplish when they fight to take political power, transforming
themselves in
the process, and act to advance the interests of working people both at
home and worldwide, as Cuban revolutionists have done.
This political attraction of the Cuban Revolution today has been shown,
among other ways, in the response of workers and farmers in France,
South Africa,
Venezuela and elsewhere to visits by the Cuban Five, five
revolutionaries imprisoned for a decade and a half in the U.S. for their
actions in defense of
the Cuban Revolution.
Waters had just returned from participating in a conference in Vietnam
on building support in Asia and the Pacific for the Cuban Revolution and
the fight
against Washington’s embargo. She laid out plans to step up party work
to press for an end to the embargo and for return to Cuba of the
Guantánamo naval
base, which has been transformed by the U.S. rulers into a torture camp
and blot on humanity. Waters discussed the importance of increasing
circulation
of Pathfinder Press books that explain the gains won in revolutionary
struggle by workers and farmers in Cuba.
She also pointed to new opportunities to step up the fight to win
freedom for Oscar López, who has spent over 34 years in U.S. prisons for
his unbending
support of independence for Puerto Rico.
Implementing meeting’s decisions
Based on the political conclusions of the National Committee, Barnes
outlined steps at the expanded Political Committee meeting for the
Socialist Workers
Party to increase its involvement in labor and social struggles, joining
with young workers who are in the vanguard of these battles and winning
youth
to the party.
Youth are attracted to two things, Barnes said, to action and to high
level political discussion — “stretching their brains.”
Party members who work at Walmart and elsewhere will step up efforts to
advance the broader fight for $15 an hour, regular schedules and a
union. This
explosive movement is already having an impact and can begin to reshape
and advance the labor movement.
Unlike every other group that claims to speak for working people, most
of which have either stopped publishing newspapers or reduced how often
they print,
the SWP is campaigning to expand the circulation of the Militant, and of
Pathfinder Press books that contain the history and continuity of the
party and
the revolutionary working class movement. Party members and supporters
take these weapons to share with workers on strike picket lines, social
protests
and political activities, in big cities and small towns and rural areas.
Books like Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power;
The Changing Face of U.S. Politics; Teamster Politics; The Working Class
and the
Transformation of Learning; and issues of New International, a magazine
of Marxist politics and theory edited by party leaders, are crucial for
party members
and others looking to understand how the class struggle is unfolding.
Reading and studying these books make it possible for workers to bring
to life the
party’s program — hammered out in struggle over decades — in order to
fight for demands in the interests of working people grounded in the
lessons of past
battles.
Increased party participation in workers’ struggles today tied to
widening circulation of the party press and literature will help expand
a Marxist current
in the labor movement, strengthening it. Carrying out this course will
help the party grow.
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