A letter to our readers: Join Socialist Action!

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2 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1985 Dear readers, We hope you find Socialist Action enlightening and valuable. We u rge you to subscribe. But we also want you to become a member of Socialist Action and help in the work of building a mass, revolutionary organization in the United States.

ACTION

Closing news date: March 25, 1985 Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Assistant Editors: NANCY GRUBER Business Manager:DON MAHONEY Circulation Manager: RALPH FORSYTH Editorial Board: Alan Benjamin, Les Evans, Dianne Feeley, Jeff Mackler, Nat Weinstein Staff: Paul Colvin, Larry Cooperman, May May Gong, Millie Gonzalez, Mark Harris, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Joe Ryan, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Marion Syrek, Sylvia Weinstein Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $6 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army St., No.

308, San Francisco, CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Action, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Rates: 12 issues for $6.00; Canada and Mexico $12.50; $30.00 airmail for all other countries;

$14.00 surface mail for all other countries.

Signed articles by contributors do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action.

These are expressed in editorials.

Socialists recognize that in order to have a humane and decent society, a revolutionary change is required. That change is the elimination of the profit system and its replacement with a system based on human needs—socialism.

Profit destroys lives throughout the world by fostering and promoting wars, poverty, racial hatred, and sexual inequality. The United States is the richest society in the history of humanity, yet food in this country is destroyed while African children die of starvation.

Nuclear weapons are stockpiled while dreaded diseases kill thousands. Small countries struggling to determine their own destinies are subjected to military attacks by U.S.-backed terrorists while social services such as education here at home are slashed.

Nicaragua, struggling for self-determination against the world's mightiest military power, is an inspiration to all who love freedom. Socialist Action supports the revolutionary gains of the Nicaraguan people. If a small, poor country can make such strides as it begins to put human needs before profit, imagine what could be done here.

Clearly, the capitalist system is more than outmoded. Its continued existence is a threat to the future of humankind and the planet earth itself. We can be optimistic about the future though, because there is a force capable of organizing society for the benefit of all its inhabitants. That force is the working people themselves. They are the majority.

The Socialist Action masthead signifies that we stand for a socialism that is democratic. In fact, without democracy there can be no socialism. This is the essence of the struggle of Polish Solidarity-for a socialism that puts the workers themselves in control.

Workers have the • the numbers, the know-how, and the ability to lead the United States out of its role of world cop and into a future of plenty, democracy, and justice. They can begin this process by establishing their own party—a labor party which can fight for the interests of working people and their allies.

Such a step could quickly lead workers to the understanding that the solution to the most pressing problems of their lives requires that they take the reins of society by establishing their own government.

We in Socialist Action act upon this optimism. We aim to help bring about this future. Our members are active builders of the antiwar movement. We are active unionists. We are fighters against racism and for sexual equality. We are also part of a long history of building an American and world working-class revolutionary organization with proud roots in working-class struggles.