http://themilitant.com/2016/8016/801601.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 16 April 25, 2016
(lead article)
‘We need to overthrow the dictatorship of capital’
Militant photos: above, Carl Weinberg; inset, Bernie Senter
Above, Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate in
Illinois, talks with participant at April 9 rally in Indianapolis
against anti-abortion law. Inset, SWP vice-presidential candidate
Osborne Hart, left, pickets with California Cartage warehouse workers in
Los Angeles during one-day strike April 6.
BY JOHN STUDER
Every place I’ve gone on this West Coast visit, supporters have taken me
to labor battles and social struggles — berry pickers fighting against
Driscoll’s bosses in Washington, families fighting cop killings of their
relatives in Bakersfield, strikers at Cal Cartage here in Los Angeles,”
Socialist Workers Party vice-presidential candidate Osborne Hart told
workers and students at a program at the University of Southern
California April 9.
“We are fighting for $15 an hour and for water and heat breaks,” Victor
Gonzales, one of the workers who struck at California Cartage April 6,
said in the discussion. “We’ll continue to have strikes until they get
the message. And it’s not just us. It was good to hear about the other
struggles taking place that you talked about tonight.”
This is the kind of response the Socialist Workers Party candidates are
getting when they present the party and its revolutionary class-struggle
perspective to workers, on picket lines, protest marches and on their
doorsteps.
“I think this election is going to be a changing moment,” 18-year-old
Tori Gill told SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy as they marched
in Indianapolis April 9 in defense of women’s right to choose abortion.
“I’m volunteering for Bernie Sanders because I don’t want to live in a
country where Ted Cruz or Donald Trump are in charge.”
“In 1964, when Republican Barry Goldwater and Democrat Lyndon Johnson
ran, there was a lot of hysteria with people saying that if Goldwater
won there would be war,” Kennedy replied. “Johnson won, but then he was
the one who escalated the Vietnam War.
“This woke me up to the reality of politics under capitalism,” Kennedy
said. “They try to make us believe we can change things by voting, but
it’s just not true. What ended the imperialist Vietnam War was the
relentless fight of the Vietnamese people for national liberation and
the anti-war movement it inspired in the U.S. And that fight changed the
way millions of workers, including among the GIs, looked at things.
“Capitalism is in crisis today, and the employers and their government
are taking it to the working class. By fighting back — and we will, by
the millions — we’ll get more confidence to rely on ourselves,” she
said. “What we have here is a social dictatorship. The capitalists hold
the power and rule in the interests of their class.
“We won’t change things by pulling a lever, but by building a
revolutionary party to take political power,” she said, “like they did
in Cuba in 1959.”
The decades-long crisis of capitalist production and trade is worsening
today. Manufacturing and mining have plummeted, from China to Brazil,
affecting exports across Europe and the U.S. Recent headlines in the
Financial Times have recurring themes — like “Grim Manufacturing Data
Dent UK Recovery” and “Grim Year Forecast for Developing Nations.”
Coal and oil bosses in Wyoming alone have tossed some 5,500 workers out
on the street as markets dry up and prices fall.
While government officials keep saying unemployment is under 5 percent
and the U.S. economy is doing well, conditions worsen for millions.
Because Washington says the recession is over, more than half a million
people who get food stamps will see them cut off now because they
haven’t found a job.
In this context, the Socialist Workers Party is getting a broader
hearing and more volunteers. And for this reason, candidates like
Republican Trump and Democrat Sanders, who say there’s a crisis and
claim they’re running against the powers that be, are drawing thousands
to their meetings and winning primary contests.
Anti-Trump hysteria
Bourgeois liberals and conservatives are pulling out the stops to defeat
Trump. The Boston Globe put a fake front page on their Sunday edition
dated April 9, 2017, with made-up stories they said could happen if
Trump is elected.
The pro-Democrat Globe editors urge primary voters to back anybody but
Trump, in hopes of denying him enough delegates to win the Republican
nomination on the first ballot, leading to an open convention fight.
This is also the strategy of Republican contenders Cruz and John Kasich.
The editors, as well as many in the Republican Party hierarchy, say they
hope Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will then be picked to represent the
party in November. But Ryan called a special press conference April 12
to say again he isn’t running.
All these attacks haven’t stopped Trump. He is currently leading polls
in New York by more than 30 points, with Cruz coming in third.
Petty-bourgeois radicals of every description say Trump is a fascist, as
dangerous as Nazi Adolf Hitler. “We intend to do what the city’s elected
so-called leaders refuse to do — and shut down Trump from spreading his
hateful message,” the Workers World Party said on its website under the
header “No Fascist Movement.”
There is no growing ultra-rightist or fascist movement today. The bosses
don’t need one, because the working class is not yet strong or organized
enough to challenge their rule.
Sanders is facing parallel attacks from the liberal Democratic Party
establishment. “Sanders Over the Edge,” headlined an April 8 New York
Times column by Paul Krugman. Attacking Sanders’ proposals for reforms
to save capitalism as it faces hard times, he says Sanders has
“character and values issues.” Worst, Krugman says, is that Sanders and
his followers might not rally behind the party banner if Hillary Clinton
wins the nomination.
Many workers see Trump and Sanders as similar. At a March 31 South Bronx
Sanders rally, Stephanie Edwards told the Financial Times she backed him
over Clinton. “She could see herself voting for Mr. Trump over Mrs.
Clinton, despite the fact she is both female and African-American,” the
paper reported.
Neither Sanders nor Trump offer a road for workers to fight back. Both
promote “America first” nationalism in an effort to tie workers’ fate to
the fate of the bosses.
“The Socialist Workers Party is a working-class party with a
revolutionary perspective that is involved in working-class struggles
today,” Kennedy told Shobi Pratap at the Indianapolis abortion rights
action. “We are building a revolutionary working-class movement to
overthrow the dictatorship of capital and take political power. We will
join with other working people worldwide in transforming the world.”
Related articles:
Help Socialist Workers Party get on ballot and campaign
Communist League in UK: No road to ‘fair capitalism’
SWP: Workers control needed for nuclear safety
Solidarity with Verizon strikers!
Help get the Socialist Workers Party presidential ticket on the ballot!
Spring subscription drive April 2-May 17 (week 1)
Militant Fighting Fund April 2-May 17
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home