'The Democratic Party is not just a 'bogeyman"

Scan page 11

leaders being taken back into the fold of the Democratic Party via the Rainbow Coalition.

As for The Nation magazine, it makes no pretenses of being a socialist publication. Its left-liberal line is clearly oriented at reforming the Democratic Party.

Objectives of conferences

John Trinkl, who was an organizer of both the East Coast and West Coast conferences, writes in his letter to Socialist Action that the goal of these gatherings is to overcome the fragmentation on the left and to move forward to greater unity. This is surely a laudable goal. The only hitch, though, is unity around what political program and for what purpose?

Trinkl, who is also an associate of The Guardian newspaper, provides an answer to this critical question in an article on the conferences which he wrote for the Spring 1986 issue of The North Star. Trinkl explains that "greater unity [of the left] will not be easy" but that already various political coalitions have sprung up that point the way forward for socialists and activists today.

The first coalition that Trinkl points to approvingly is the Rev. Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition. "The multi-racial, multi-issue Rainbow Coalition," Trinkl writes, "projected a strategic vision into the national political arena which is still valid."

Trinkl continues, "Another effort to overcome fragmentation is the National Committee for Independent Political Action (NCIPA), a loose network of activists around the country who work on a variety of issues [and] who voted to become a membership organization last year."

Trinki, like most of the conference organizers who also support the Rainbow Coalition and NCIPA, argue that these two coalitions are expressions of independent political action. But unfortunately, the term independent political action, like the term peace, means different things to different people.

Jesse Jackson, for example, recently told the press that "Independence is not separatism." He continued, "Our tension in the [Democratic] party is not over whether we should remain Democrats or not, it is over the direction of the party." • At the conclusion of the National Rainbow Coalition convention last April, Jackson made it clear that his aim is not to build an independent political party. "We have too much invested in the Democratic Party," he said. "When you have money in the bank, you don't walk away from it."

The NCIPA's support for a wing of the Democratic Party is also cloaked with the term "independent." NCIPA in its draft political statement argues for the need to build a third "independent people's" party sometime in the future. But its tactics in pursuing this end "involve supporting some Democratic candidates." NCIPA's primary work has been support to the Rainbow Coalition and to local "left" Democratic Party clubs, like the Berkeley Citizens Alliance.

Gwen Patton, who is a representative of the Alabama New South Coalition on NCIPA's national steering committee, was one of the panelists at the West Coast Conference. "Independent politics and forming an independent party do not necessarily mean a third party," Patton stated. "Rather, they are organized vehicles to make the Democrats responsive. We run independent campaigns and then, as a matter of strategy, go back into the Democratic Party."

The conference itself, which our reporter covered fairly—to the chagrin of some of the organizers—was clearly stamped with the pro-Rainbow, pro-Democratic Party "progressive wing" orientation of its main organizers, sponsors, and speakers.

The Democratic Party is no "bogeyman," as Trinkl states. A bogeyman is an imaginary frightful being. There is nothing imaginary about the Democratic Party's direct participation in the attacks on working people here and abroad. The "common enemies" Trinkl urges Socialist Action to fight against include the Democratic Party.

Virtually all the organizations listed by Trinkl as endorsers of the conference have what they call an "inside/outside" approach toward the Democratic Party. Some, however, support the Jackson wing of the Democratic Party, while others (namely the Democratic Socialists of America) prefer the Cuomo/Hart wing of the party. (Our reporter incorrectly mentioned Kennedy and Hart as the DSA's likely presidential choices in 1988. It should have read Cuomo and Hart.)

The Communist Party USA, which according to Trinkl also helped organize the conference, has been one of the major road-blocks in the path of genuine independent political action. Today it is mobilizing to "elect a [Democratic Party] congressional peace in the 1986 elections.

Even Bernie Sanders, who according to Trinkl represented the left wing of the conference, campaigned for Mondale in 1984 and now appears to be endorsing the National Rainbow Coalition and NCIPA. [For more on Bernie Sanders, see interview with Terry Bouricius in this section.] Jesse Jackson has supported Bernie Sanders' independent campaign for governor of Vermont as a vehicle to put pressure on the Democrats. "In areas where the Democratic Party is unresponsive, independence will be a live option," Jackson told The Guardian last April.

History of "independent" reform movements Prior to 1936 and the false promises of Roosevelt's "New Deal," Marxists and others who called themselves socialists all agreed that it was impermissible to join or support political parties of the capitalist class. They were opposed to this in principle. They knew that the ruling class organized and financed the two-party system as a necessary part of its governing apparatus.

The 1930s saw the rise of a mass social movement, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), to which millions of workers flocked. The CIO was a semipolitical movement with profound revolutionary implications. The key question for workers at that time was the need to organize politically as a class to carry on the struggle in the political arena.

This was also, of course, a key question for the capitalists who, under Roosevelt, attempted to adjust and reform the institutions of rule in order to absorb the discontent and upsurge into the traditional political forms.

In 1936, the leaders of the CIO, backed up by the leaders of the Communist Party and many in the Socialist Party, supported Roosevelt. They urged support for the Democratic Party and established for the first time the Black-labor-liberal Democratic Party electoral coalition.

But these reformists and labor bureaucrats, at least at first, could not campaign directly for the Democrats because opposition to this capitalist party was very deep among working people. (The second national convention of the United Auto Workers in May 1936, for example, Nicaraguan woman and child. Mondale would have quarantined Nicaragua.

voted unanimously to form a labor party.) Instead the labor officialdom set up the Labor Non-Partisan League and the American Labor Party, which, while seemingly "independent," turned around and called for a vote for Roosevelt.

There have been many other examples of so-called "independent" reform movements. These include the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace in 1948, the Peace and Freedom Party of the 1960s, and others. All were obstacles in the path of promoting a real break with the twin capitalist parties. It is no surprise that a recent editorial in The Guardian hails the National Rainbow Coalition as "offering the broadest political possibilities in the U.S. since Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party."

Since its formation, Socialist Action has actively participated in many broad: nd united action coalitions against U.S. foreign and domestic policies. We will continue to work with all in building mass actions like the anti-intervention demonstrations projected for the spring of 1987 in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

But in our view unity-whether in demonstrations in the streets or in the electoral arena-can only be based on political independence from the parties of capitalism. That is why we must warn against efforts to work inside and reform the Democratic Party. This is essential in order to prepare the future working-class break with capitalist politics.—THE EDITOR SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1986