[loe Ryan/Socialist Action are living in a "conservative…]

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loe Ryan/Socialist Action are living in a "conservative era."

The fact that the U.S. ruling class as a whole has turned to the right cannot be denied. Even the most cynical recognize that Reagan's policies are just an extension of the policies carried out by the Carter administration. A bipartisan alliance in the Congress is deepening the ruling-class attacks on workers at home and moving the country closer to war abroad.

But it is a serious mistake to identify the rightward turn of the ruling class with the consciousness of the workers.

Working people-particularly the oppressed Black and Latino population -have experienced a long period of deepening attacks. The basic fabric of their lives has been undermined by rising and continuous unemployment, plant closures, (continued next page)

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Conference organizers believe working class, like these San Francisco Local 2 hotel workers, are marginal to the struggle for social change.

Working people today need their own political party, a labor party based on the trade union movement and open to all SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1986 Jesse Jackson Socialist Action layoffs, wage cuts, and other direct assaults on their rights and standard of living.

Most working people today feel less secure, less confident in the government and the politicians, and less confident that by sheer individual effort the problems they face can be solved.

According to the polls, a majority of the population does not support the U.S. war drive, the increasing stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the growing interventionist policies of the government.

Workers have less confidence in the boss and a better understanding that their lives are more and more controlled by forces that are hostile to their interests. They are not as easily convinced that there is a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.

What's behind the high abstentionism?

Many on the left today point to the election of Reagan as proof of the rightward drift of the population.

Jim Shock of the DSA sent a quiver through the audience at the Berkeley conference when he reported that a NewYork Times/CBS poll found that 66 percent of those who did not vote in the 1984 presidential elections would have voted for Reagan had they decided to cast a ballot. The poll was based on phone interviews with 1789 non-voters.

Only 53 percent of those eligible to vote in 1984 actually voted. Reagan, who won the oppressed...

59 percent of the votes cast, was therefore elected by only 31 percent of the electorate. Revolutionary socialists have long argued that the increasing percentage of voter abstentionism in the elections is a sign of increased disaffection with the two-party system and a form of rejection of capitalist politics. Does this Times/CBS poll, assuming it is representative of the nonvoting population, invalidate this contention?

First, regardless of their declared presidential preference, nearly half the eligible voting-age population did not vote. They obviously didn't feel their vote was necessary or would make much of a difference.

Second, it is incorrect to assume that voter preference for Reagan over Carter or Mondale reflects a shift to the right.

Working people have learned from experience that there are few, if any, real differences among politicians. The almost regular alternation of Democrat and Republican presidents is more an indication of the general disillusionment with both capitalist parties than it is of a shift in opinion on the part of the general population.

Lacking alternative Carter in 1980, many voters preferred the "new face" of Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Walter Mondale tried to "out-Reagan" Reagan. His policies were indistinguishable from Reagan's. But his face was already familiar, and few people liked it.

Moreover, many of those who actually voted for Reagan in 1984 also expressed disagreement with many of his policies. In Los Angeles county, for example, Reagan received 54.5 percent of the votes cast. But at the same time, 60 percent of these voters approved a "Jobs with Peace" initiative calling for military spending cuts and more money for social programs.

In the small town of Olympia, Wash., Reagan won 62 percent of the vote, while Proposition 1, which called for an end to U.S. aid to the contras and an end to U.S. intervention in El Salvador, passed with 64 percent of the vote.

Similar initiatives on South Africa and nuclear weapons were approved nationwide in areas where Reagan defeated Mondale. Indeed, when working people had the opportunity to vote on the issues, they overwhelmingly rejected the ruling class' reactionary program-even though they may also have voted for Reagan.

The mainstream media understood this contradictory situation much better than Jim Shock. Three days after Reagan's reelection, a New York Times editorial put it this way: "President Reagan's lonely landslide is a personal victory with little precise mandate or clear ideological underpinning."

"Lesser evilism" yesterday and The left's crisis is a product of misleadership, not of the alleged con -servatism of U.S. workers.

Groups like the CP and DSA have operated within the framework of the Democratic Party for the past five decades. They argue that it is necessary to support the Democratic Party as a "lesser evil" to the Republicans.

The CP's politics are based on the strategy of seeking "peaceful coexistence" between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world. The various social movements in which the CP participates are seen as vehicles to pressure capitalist politicians and the Democratic Party into seeking diplomatic accommodations with the conservative Soviet bureaucracy, which the CP defends. For the sake of such accommodations, mass movements in the United States and revolutionary struggles abroad are put on the back-burner—if not totally snuffed out.

The DSA bases itself on a layer of the U.S. trade-union bureaucrats and in -tellectuals who also seek to subordinate the independent mobilizations of the working class and the oppressed to political support for the bosses and their political parties.

The DSA makes no bones about its long-term commitment to the Democratic Party. Preparing for a DSA-initiated "New Directions" conference last May, the purpose of which was to press for reforms inside the Democratic Party, the DSA stated: "Our own political party, the Democratic Party-standard bearer for the past half-century of the causes of justice and growth-can articulate those alternatives [to Reagan]. But, sad to say, it hasn't."

Thus, for the DSA, the Democratic Party-initiated Korean and Vietnam wars were unfortunate aberrations, at best. Today's top DSA leader, Michael Harrington, actually supported the policies of the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. These policies resulted in the slaughter of more than 500,000 Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans.

The Kennedy administration's Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Kennedysponsored sending of U.N. troops to the Congo to help overthrow the Lumumba regime are accidents of history to be forgotten in the name of "lesser-evilism."

Should the open racism of Democratic presidents Johnson and Carter, whose segregationist records were conveniently hidden when it came election time, also be considered part of this "half-century of justice" championed by the Democratic Party?

But this "lesser evilism" is not limited to elections and lobbying efforts. This dead-end strategy has permeated the activity of nearly all the so-called "progressives."

During the recent Congressional debates over U.S. aid to the contras, for instance, the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy-which includes SANE, the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, DSA, and important church organizations-supported "lesser evil" compromises, including "humanitarian" aid to the contras and postponement of military aid to a later time.

In a similar vein, peace activists supported proposals for funds for 40 MX missiles-as opposed to Reagan's call for 200. Likewise, numerous movement groups supported "non-military" aid to the Duarte regime in El Salvador.

All these compromises are made in the name of the "lesser evil" and in the name of peace. They are supported by radicals, "socialists," and others who insist that there is no alternative to the political parameters of the Democratic Party.

Independent political action

Revolutionary socialists participate in and help build all social movements where working people struggle for their basic rights. They do this, however, with the understanding that the root cause of war and social inequality is the division of society into classes with fundamentally opposed interests.

The mobilization of the majority, the movement in this Thad fight back against drives of both Republicans.

Sadly, the West Socialism and Act with charting an i perspective for the to do with building the streets to give opposition to the government.

Joe Ryan/Socialist Action working class, is the key to social change. Those who rule in the name of private property and capitalist profit have no choice but to continue the policies which lead to war and to the erosion of basic human rights and values.

Revolutionary socialists understand that the power of the mass movement is measured by its independence from the parties of the capitalist class-by its capacity to mobilize the majority to defend its own rights.

As workers defend these rights on the job and through strikes, rallies, and mass demonstrations, they learn that their struggle represents the great majority, and that this majority has the power to fundamentally alter social relations. As they confront the employers on the job site, they see the need to challenge the bosses' parties in the government as well.

To the extent that the workers' movement depends on the good will of a few capitalist politicians, rather than on its own power, the policies of the rich will remain unchallenged. Conversely, to the extent that a united movement combining the energies of all those who seek justice is constructed, the illusion that the capitalist parties represent a majority will be shattered.

Working people today need their own political party, a labor party based on the trade-union movement and open to all the oppressed and all those who struggle for human dignity.

A labor party in the United! States will be the natural outgrowth and political expression of the workers' movement as it takes on the bosses in the political arena. This is the next giant step the workers' country must take to the war and austerity the Democrats and Coast Conference on ivism had little to do ndependent socialist working class and less a united movement in form to the growing policies of the U.S.

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Chirac and Mitterand: A smile covers up growing tensions. AFP