"The record is replete with acts of betrayal by the American labor bureaucracy."

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the revolutionary party of the workers could have made big strides forward.

Perhaps the most glaring example is the United States itself during the 1960s. Despite the political turmoil-the Black and women's struggles for equal rights, the anti-Vietnam War upsurge and student radicalization, the struggle by gays and lesbians for basic democratic rights— employment and living standards were maintained and even made modest gains. And while inflation received a big warspurred impetus, most wages were able to keep pace—often, most effectively, through escalator clauses in union contracts.

American capitalism's ability to maintain its superficially benign stance toward workers' economic needs set an important limit on the depth of the radicalization. Unlike the radicalization of the 1930s, the one in the 1960s was not accompanied by a rise in class consciousness. This is only a measure of the limit placed by world effective class struggle is no longer a perception in the class of a modest but gradual improvement in living standards. The major blocks to a mass fightback are the labor bureaucracy's stubborn commitment to class peace and the perception among workers that their current setbacks are only temporary. This is what has slowed the rise of class consciousness.

But hopes that the cycle of concessions and takebacks is only temporary are dimming as the anti-labor offensive endures capitalist state. And even when, from time to time, a particular group of workers and their leaders attempt a serious fightback, solidarity action is suppressed or blocked by the top bureaucrats. (This is their way of proving to the ruling class their genuine commitment to the "partnership between capital and labor.")

Two examples stand out:

• The miners' strike in 1978-79, which defied President Carter's threat to call out federal troops to crush their strike: George helping to tip the balance in favor of the embattled coal miners. This example illustrates how a small group armed with a tested revolutionary program is able to merge with new layers of class fighters, impelled into action by events, and to have a real effect on the outcome of the struggle.

• The strike of the Local P-9 Hormel workers: During this strike, we witnessed the shameless strikebreaking role of the UFCW International bureaucrats-with the active collaboration of the top AFL-CIO officialdom-against their own Local P-9. The record is replete with similar, although perhaps less crass, acts of betrayal by the American labor bureaucracy.

Why has there not yet arisen a class-struggle opposition to the official labor strategy of betrayal? Why has no serious movement yet surfaced to replace the (continued on page 12)

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Solidarity Day showed tremendous potential for labor to mobilize its political power—millions of workers in the streets.

Subscribe today to ... crisis (continued from page 11) bankrupt union bureaucrats with class-struggle fighters?

The labor bureaucracy and its apologists have a pat answer. They claim the workers have the leadership they want. This would appear to be the case only if one examines the problem of leadership-selection-which remains essentially democratic-isolated and apart from the class struggle as a whole.

The real reason there has not yet emerged a class-struggle left wing, challenging the bureaucrats for leadership, is two-sided:

First, every concession granted without a fight by the bureaucracy contributes to the workers' perception of the unending retreat as objectively determined. The unions are made to appear to be more and more incapable of resistance. This defeatest mood feeds on itself, further undermining class self-confidence.

Second, the takebacks have not yet qualitatively affected the living standards of the heavy battalions of industrial workers. Except for those workers in steel and other industries dumped on the scrap-heap, the reduction in living standards has been slowed by the increasing number of twoincome families, overtime, and moonlighting in a still relatively stable economy.

The ruling class knows it can't push too far, too fast, without precipitating an upheaval. More important, they are not yet driven by necessity to risk the rebellion that would, and will, come with more drastic reductions in wages and benefits.

The ruling class prefers to postpone a showdown with labor while they continue gaining steady concessions and while profits remain high and go even higher. The fact is that paper profits, as registered on the stock market, keep climbing to new heights, breaking records almost as fast as new ones are established. Since August 1982, alone, all stocks rose in value by $1.8 trillion—at the rate of about $1 billion a day. And the dizzying climb of the stock market, defying the gravitational force of economic realities, accelerates as this report is being written!

The capitalists are in no rush. It is to their advantage to go slow, to allow the illusion of a changing objective relation of forces to sink in and further erode workers' will to resist. Meanwhile, the labor bureaucracy strains every muscle to divert the natural inclinations of workers to fight back toward their suicidal form of political action-support to the Democratic wing of the capitalist two-party system.

The labor party slogan Political action has indeed long been on the order of the day. But effective political action can only be mounted independently and in opposition to the capitalist parties. This independent political road, the formation of a labor party based on the unions for the purpose of mounting a struggle for political power, would change AcTion the relation of class forces in short order.

But the labor bureaucracy fears the consequences of this course of action. Independent political action implies class struggle. Moreover, to set such a labor party into motion would require an inspiring motivation which could only be based on the need to defend workers' interests against the bosses.

This would objectively serve to inspire class-struggle tactics on the picket lines and in the streets, even before a mass workers' party can begin to assemble itself on the political fields of battle. The bureaucracy no doubt is convinced that this dynamic would be difficult, if not impossible, to control.

A labor party coming into existence as a bureaucratized institution (such as the unions have become) is not in the cards. It could only become real if the workers are moved into action by appeals to their class interests. And just as the industrial unions could not conquer their right to existence without class-struggle methods, neither can a mass party of labor.

Neither is a bureaucratically controlled labor party realistic if the same bureaucracy continues to interpose itself between an aroused union rank and file and the bosses. The workers will run head on into conflict with the bureaucratic obstacle to effective struggle in the unions. This tendency would inevitably be reflected in the labor party as well.

In short, a British-style fully bureaucratized labor party cannot spring full-blown from the heads of the lords of labor-and what's more, they know it. They know that a safe, uninspiring, insipid, highly controlled, exclusively electoral movement will not win many elections. This will not strengthen them vis-a-vis the bosses. And conversely, a dynamic, independent political movement, not restricted to electoralism, cannot be RE controlled. It would, in fact, set in motion-even before a major economic crisis-a class struggle left wing that would sweep the bureaucrats aside and bury them.

Only a resurgence of a new wave of class-struggle fighters is likely to set in motion the construction of a mass workers' party. It would be intimately connected with a rank-and-file struggle to regain control over their unions as well as its political extension.

But this only reinforces the viability of the labor party slogan. At present, it remains a propaganda slogan mainly intended to help raise the understanding of the few workers whose ears we are able to reach. It will become an agitational and action slogan only after objective conditions have generated enough pressure to impel workers into class-struggle action, despite the bureaucratic obstruction. Effective action on the picket lines, then, will go hand in hand with effective political action in the streets and in the electoral arena.

We do not exclude, however, the possibility that a section of the bureaucracy which has not been badly compromised might break with its most conservative wing and take real initiatives toward forming a labor party. This is possible even before a major economic collapse shakes things up. We would, of course, leap in and help advance such a development.

A wait-and-see mood The combination of bureaucratic betrayal and the ruling class offensive-both relentless and cautious-has created the current wait-and-see mood in labor ranks that contravenes, for the time being, the emergence of a class-struggle left wing current. While a small class-struggle vanguard does exist and gathered strength in the course of Local P-9's battle, the defeat of the Austin packinghouse workers has temporarily set this development back.

Meanwhile, to rationalize their strategy of subordination to capitalism, the labor bureaucrats hammer away on the theme: "You, the workers, are too weak; they, the bosses, are too strong." And every betrayal, every cowardly retreat, every capitulation, serves as a self-fulfillment of bureaucratic prophesy.

Not the least of the negative effects of bureaucratic policy is the fruits of their electoral "victories." Democratic Party politicians in power rapidly show their true colors, demoralizing those workers taken in by pro-labor campaign rhetoric.

This is the objective/subjective background dynamic explaining the continued tolerance, thus far, of the badly discredited labor bureaucracy.

But it would be dead wrong to draw any pessimistic conclusions from these facts of life. It is only a small part of the molecular movement of capitalist society as it relentlessly exhausts all its possibilities, discredits its labor lieutenants, and shatters illusions in capitalism itself.

History is doing its work. It finds its way toward raising mass political consciousness like water seeking its level. While the labor bureaucracy has kept its stranglehold over the fighting institutions of the workers, the masses are finding their way to higher levels of understanding.

Vietnam, Watergate, and now Contragate merely punctuate the deepening awareness of the decay of American society. A wordassociation test given to an average worker would probably record a high proportion of connections like: politician-crook, patriotprofiteer, and freedom fighter-murderer.

When the inevitable economic crisis strikes, the American workers will be on a far higher political level than were their forebears in 1929.

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Socialist JAW

Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action Actior