2nd national convention

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example for the entire labor movement on how to fight back and win. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

Both the P-9 leadership and the Ray Roger's Corporate Campaign tried to overcome every obstacle they faced and were dead serious about their struggle against Hormel, the government, and the labor bureaucracy.

This leadership is now trying to rebuild its union under a different name. It has formed the North American Meat Packers Union (NAMPU). This is the only option available to them short of surrender. Socialist Action supports the effort to get this union recognized.

Neither the Communist Party nor the National Rank and File Against Concessions (NRFAC) support this move. The CP has long opposed P-9, reaching a new low when a recent People's Daily World accused NAMPU of being a "company union." The Stalinists seek to preserve their ties to the AFL-CIO and UFCW bureaucracy.

Today, the Austin militants are continuing their struggle by pursuing the Hormel boycott as their chief strategy. Boycotts are historically the weakest form for mobilizing working class power, but it is to their credit that the ex-P-9 leaders are attempting to keep the fight going.

Nonetheless, the power of the labor bureaucracy and the intervention of the capitalist state have combined to deal this struggle a decisive blow. Short of a resurgence of the strike in other Hormel units, it seems unlikely these fighters will be able to reverse the blows they have absorbed.

Despite many significant demonstrations of combativity, there exists an overall mood of caution which restrains the anger of the working class.

American workers have been taking heavy blows since the 1979 Chrysler $1billion giveaway contract. Working people, in general, remain on the defensive today.

A number of complex and contradictory pressures affecting the consciousness of the the working class by saying that the strength of the two-party hold on the labor movement and the power of the labor bureaucracy have combined, so far, to thwart the class-struggle impulses of the working class.

Power of Lately, there has been a tendency by many radicals and progressives to question the power of the working class, especially its industrial sector. Socialist Action rejects any notion that the industrial section of the working class has lost its fundamental power to drive the American socialist revolution.

The living conditions of industrial workers have been worsened by capitalism's drive to increase profits by displacing human labor with machines and tech -nology. Despite all these blows, however, the working class still retains its powerful industrial forms of organization and its ability to shut down the whole country.

The significant political weakening of the working class results from the class-collaborationist policies of the last 50 years—not from the decline in absolute numbers of industrial workers. The the working class-equipped with a class-struggle program-to fundamentally transform society.

Our solutions

The ideas of the Transitional Program—our socialist program—remain more than ever our guide to action in the period ahead.

The scourge of unemployment is a natural result of this system. The capitalists, who must restructure and shift capital from one venture to another in search of profits, throw millions into the ranks of the unemployed.

The sliding scale of hours and wages—or 30 hours work for 40 hours pay—is the socialist solution to the unemployment created by the anarchy of capitalist production. The working class should benefit from the advances of technology by lowering the hours of work with no loss in pay.

Socialist Action is for a massive publicworks program to build schools, hospitals, low-cost housing, and mass transportation systems as an answer to the crises produced by the private ownership of the means of production.

The socialist program for increasing profits." class are counterposed to the profit motives of the capitalists.

Social protest movements

The 1950s civil rights' struggle against "Jim Crow" segregation began in -dependently of the demobilized unions. The same was true of the 1960s' anti-Vietnam War and women's liberation movements.

All of these struggles eventually attracted some labor support, but the lack of largescale union participation was a major handicap. Many of the leaders of the antiwar and women's liberation move -ments, therefore, did not readily see the labor movement as the inspiration and potential motor force behind their fight.

The bureaucracy's 50-year stranglehold on the unions has, consequently, distorted the development of American politics.

The traditional peace, antiwar, and solidarity movements have been historically led by individuals who reflect middle-class feelings of powerlessness and pessimism. As a result of labor's abstention, a greater role in social protest movements has been played by figures who have never seen the working class in motion.

This accentuates the tendency of protest movements to rely on one of the capitalist parties—the Democratic Party.

Like the labor bureaucracy, the leadership of the protest movements seeks to channel these protests into the Democratic Party. This has restrained and hampered the building of mass mobilizations.

None of the wide variety of Central American solidarity groups, for example, has advocated a mass-action strategy to defend those revolutions.

Fortunately, many of these organizations are now opting for demonstrations because their pro-Democratic Party electoral activity in both 1984 and 1986 has proven to be a disaster. Reliance on "liberal" capitalist politicians is harder to justify when it is ever-more evident that the war and austerity drives are completely bipartisan..

U.S. intervention in Central America The revolutions in Central America-and Nicaragua in particular-face the most immediate threat of direct U.S. inter -vention. This is where Washington is focusing its attacks. This is where the U.S. government hopes to deliver its most (continued on page 10, in “2nd national convention”)