Is the Rainbow Coalition an alternative in '88 election?

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1987 The following are excerpts from a Socialist Action forumidebate in New York City on Nov. 6 titled, "Election 1988: Which Way Forward for Working People." The two speakers were Irving Beinen, executive committee member of the National Committee for Independent Political Action (NCIPA), and Nat Weinstein, national secretary of Socialist Action.

Irving Beinen: In 1984 Jesse Jackson gave what I believe is a fair description of how he views the Rainbow Coalition. He said at that time:

"My commitment as a presidential candidate is to focus on and lift those votes stuck on the bottom full of unpolished pearls, so if those votes on the bottom rise, all votes will rise."

The Rainbow campaign has stirred a deep response from the Black communities across the country. This is shown by the jump in voter registration. It's shown by the excitement and enthusiasm the campaign has aroused. The old politics are discredited, and the Jackson campaign is seen as the best chance-the only chance that has appeared for a long time-for the downtrodden to get what they want out of life.

It is not good enough to repeat old slogans and preconceived scenarios. One has to relate to the ongoing context of what's happening in the country today-as well as what's not happening, where the labor union movement is not playing a leading role and has not played a leading role for almost 50 years.

Now the National Rainbow Coalition is not a labor party and it is institutionally related to the Democratic Party, even though it is not part of the Democratic Party as such. But its basic thrust and program and its constituency makes it come closer to a labor party than anything we have seen in 50 years.

I want to say something else that is very important. The factor which has most led to the weakness and division within the labor movement is racism. The Jackson campaign, by asking people to recognize a Black as their leader, as their spokesperson, is an historic change.

I also want to say something about the internal contradictions in the Rainbow. Because it is a coalition and because it derives its energy from so many different directions and has support from so many different sections of the country and classes, they're bound to be serious and severe contradictions within the Rainbow structure.

There are fierce struggles being waged in the Rainbow Coalition. It is essentially a struggle for its future. Will the Rainbow be part of the Democratic Party or will it be an independent party? This is a struggle which has not been resolved.

There are many forces within the Rainbow pushing it in the direction of an independent party. There are others who want to use the Rainbow in order to have a little more strength for their campaigns. These are the people who want to keep the Rainbow within the Democratic Party.

The second struggle is over who controls the Rainbow? Is it going to be the officers—a handful of elected or appointed people who decide what happensor is it going to be the people who built the Rainbow, who go out and get the votes and do the voter registration and do all the work that is necessary to build a party? This struggle also has not been resolved. These issues which emerged right at the start are still with us.

Nat Weinstein: The problem of the American working class is only partially touched on by the discussion before us tonight. There is a bigger question involved than electoralism and what to do in the 1988 election, and that is the basic problem of independent working-class action both on the plant level and on the political level. They are intimately connected.

The biggest problem that we have is to break workers from the idea that some kind of partnership exists between the working class and sections of the capitalist class. Socialist Action is an organization that is based upon the classical Marxist conception that the interests of the workers as a class and those of the capitalists as a class are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed.

The biggest problem that we have is to break through the myth that has prevented working people in the United States from developing a consciousness of themselves as a class.

I am convinced that the crisis that occurred on the stock market on Oct. 19 is a sign of big changes that are taking place down the road. We are going to see a destabilization that will be at least as profound as the destabilization of world capitalism that took place after the 1929 stock market crash. It is important to take this perspective to discuss this question before us tonight.

One of the reasons that the working class is in retreat now is because the long-term stability of capitalism has permitted the labor bureaucracy and other misleaders within the ranks of the working class to orient working people toward placing confidence in this or that section of the capitalist class.

Working people in the United States have been led to accept the mistaken strategic approach that it is not possible to solve their problems outside the framework of the profitability of the business enterprises that they work for. That's the policy of the labor bureaucracy, and it's also expressed politically in the idea that it is not possible for workers to advance their interests independent of the Democratic and Republican parties.

I have read and listened very carefully to the speeches and positions given by Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, which he represents. It is clear to me that it's probably one of the more left wing, more radical Jill Freedman platforms that have emerged within the framework of the Democratic Party.

Here's the rub. It is a platform that redirects working people and all of the oppressed in exactly the wrong direction; into the direction which has led to the decline of the power of the labor movement in the United States.

The big struggles that took place in the 1930s on the economic plane were independent of capitalism and in opposition to the capitalist class. It is for that reason that the working class made the gains that it did; gains that have lasted for such an unprecedented period of time.

Even if Jesse Jackson had a program that fitted the needs of the working class, the fact that he orients the workers toward the Democratic Party is a major disservice to the working class. Such an orientation is an obstacle to the need to develop an independent class approach to politics and to all the problems that exist in this society.

The result of supporting capitalist candidates like Jesse Jackson is that he inevitably must make compromises. Whoever leads workers in this direction must make compromises with sections of the capitalist class on very important questions that relate to the unity and interests

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of the working class.

In order to win the battles that are to come, working people have to see their interests as they are; that is, in sharp contradiction to the interests of the ruling captalist class in the United States. And everything that points workers away from this perspective slows down the development of the consciousness that's necessary for the struggles to come.

Jesse Jackson has called for an economic Camp David to forge a national consensus among business, labor, and Wall Street on cutting the military budget, raising taxes, and reducing the budget and trade deficits. "We are all in the economic trenches now even if on Wall Street the trenches are mahogany lined," he said. "Wall Street cannot escape Main Street. We are one."

This is the message of the Jackson campaign. This is the message of a united campaign on the part of all classes in American society. A united campaign to meet the "common threat to everybody's interests in the United States," and this, in my opinion, is the road to disaster.

The policy of supporting Democrats forces the leaders of the working class to subordinate the interests of workers to the support of the capitalist politicians. That's the logic of your policy, Irving.

Irving Beinen: First, let me say something about the Democratic Party. There's no question that Jesse Jackson, running in the Democratic primary, is running in the Democratic Party. What I also said is that there's a struggle to change that situation.

We're not only talking about Jesse Jackson, we're talking about a mass movement. There are people who respond to Jackson personally, to the Rainbow Coalition, who are involved in struggles and who have the power to change this country around.

The issue is not Jesse Jackson. The issue is a mass movement that is being built with his leadership, but will also be built without his leadership if that ever becomes necessary. You say he wouldn't call for a cut in hours without a cut in pay. Of course he would. He has.

He's against plant closings. Is that in the interest of the capitalist class? He's marched on picket lines supporting workers in the most important strikes of the country. Is that in the interest of the capitalists? Are those good pro-capitalist statements? You're not dealing with reality. You've got yourself locked up in a little box with an old ideology. This is a canned speech I heard from my friend Nat. It simply doesn't deal with the world we live in.

Nat Weinstein: You point out that we're not connected with reality. I didn't propose that all Jesse Jackson has to say is "socialist revolution" and he's got my vote. That's not the point. Even if he did say he was for a socialist revolution I wouldn't believe him. It isn't so much what he says.

For me, what's decisive is who he's marching with. He's marching with the Democratic Party. And everything that he says is very radical, but it's a very radical defense of capitalism. What's important to me is that the people who listen to what I have to say will be prepared for the fact that these promises will be betrayed. But the people who listen to Irving, I'm afraid, will be shocked and dismayed and demoralized.

In order to predict what's going to happen, you have to know what has happened in the past. Otherwise you have to be a mind reader and have a crystal ball. I'm not a mind reader and I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what's in Jesse Jackson's mind, but I don't have to know. I know what he can't do because of who he's tied up with. He can't carry out any of the promises he's talking about, and he will not-and he won't get elected.

Question: I'd like to address this issue of a mass movement. Irving has said that a mass movement has been created around the Rainbow Coalition. I've run into Irving over the last 20 years. I know he knows something about mass movements.

But I also know that Irving must have seen or at least figured out by now that one of the things that really demobilizes the mass movements that have occurred in the United States have been precisely the kind of electoral campaigns that we have seen develop around the Rainbow Coalition. We saw it in 1984 when there was a period of intense escalation in Central America, the mining of Nicaraguan harbors. There wasn't any kind of organized response to that because people were buried in the Democratic Party ringing doorbells.

This is a recurring problem that we have in the mass movement. These election campaigns—the Rainbow Coalition-do not build mass movements. They do precisely the opposite by taking people out of the streets, taking people out of real struggles that can accomplish something, and turning them into an exercise in futility in the electoral arena.

The fundamental changes that we need in society are not going to be accomplished through elections. We have to figure out how to intervene in elections, but the important thing is building a mass movement around the unions, around demonstrations, the civil rights movement, women's liberation movement and other Jesse Jackson -Irving Beinen disservice I think that the Rainbow Coalition has done.

Irving Beinen: I'm not impressed by prognostications. What I do know is that you don't wait for events to unfold. You need an organization to move with. If there were a labor party or if the trade unions were to call for the kind of leadership that's been talked about, that would be one situation. That is not the way it is.

The way it is, is that the Rainbow Coalition, essentially a Black-led movement that's. becoming more and more of a rainbow, has taken the leadership. And there are some trade unionists, not many, who are joining those ranks and who will help give a working-class character to the Rainbow Coalition. I think that when the die is cast, Jesse Jackson will be on our side.

Where will you get a better expression of what should happen in Central America? Where will you get a better expression of what should happen with the plants that have been closed? He has provided leadership in a number of areas.

Which section of the capitalist class does Jesse Jackson represent? Is it industry? The Democratic Party is not a section of the capitalist class. It's a capitalist party but it's not a section of the capitalist class. The Democratic Party consists in its main not of capitalists. Which section of the capitalists class does Jesse Jackson represent? He doesn't represent any of it.

Jackson is running in a capitalist party, that's what's happening. But he's running in a capitalist party with a program that favors the working class and the people as a whole. He's running in a capitalist party with the support of the most oppressed people in this country.

It's not true either that electoral campaigns weaken movements. Sometimes that could happen and that has happened. But the fact is that leaders of the nonintervention movements in Central America and South Africa, leaders of the gay and lesbian movement, leaders of the peace movement are all supporting Jesse Jackson. Now does that mean that they would do this if they thought their movements were being torn apart by his Campaign? I don't think so. They see his campaign as building those movements.

Question: I don't think the question of the Democratic Party is the dividing line between revolutionaries and progressives or whatever. I happen to agree with Irving. Who before a national audience on TV speaks about South Africa? Who went to Nicaragua? Who went to Cuba? Who is coming before trade-union meetings all across the country and saying this?

Now it's true he's campaigning in the Democratic Party, but for now, that's the only party that exists to campaign in. The dividing line is what you do in the real world and what struggles you're for, what struggles you're against, and what struggles you participate in.

Question: You say Jesse Jackson went to Cuba. Jesse Jackson went to Nicaragua. But then, Jesse Jackson supported Mondale who made the racist speech, who called for sanctions against Nicaragua. This is what happens when you seek to build a mass movement within the Democratic Party. He walks on picket lines but he also talks more than ever of the need for sticking to the Democratic Party.

One of Jackson's more eloquent statements was, "The Democratic Party has a right wing, and it has a left wing, and everybody knows that you need two wings to fly." That means, if you're going any place, stick with the Democratic Party. The right wing is necessary, and fly, direction unknown.

Irving Beinen: The Jackson campaign is the left wing of the Democratic Party, no question about it. And whatever we think about two wings, the fact of the matter is that in this case the left wing is fighting the right wing.

Now, as far as the last question about the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is a capitalist party. I personally think you should not support capitalist parties. I can see that the most effective thing that I can do today is to support a mass movement which believes that it can win over a large section of the party, perhaps later to create an independent party.

So that one can't be so rigid in these political constructions. The Democratic Party, in fact, is not just a capitalist party. It's a capitalist party whose main base consists of workers, Blacks, Latinos, poor people, even unemployed people. It is controlled lock, stock, and barrel by big business and by capitalists, without any question. What Jackson is trying to do is to change that situation, to weaken that control.

Nat Weinstein: The term "section of the capitalist class" is the rationalization that most of the bureaucrats in the labor movement and many reformist socialists use to justify their support for this or that candidate who seems to be somewhat to the left inside the Democratic Party. They argue that there are divisions inside the capitalist class, and that therefore it is correct to take advantage of these divisions and to support one wing or another.

Now Irving and others point to the fact that there are many who support the Rainbow who come from the working class. There are women; there are gay activists; there are antiwar activists, and so on. And all these people are certainly not part of the capitalist class. Well that is true.

But you don't determine the nature of a political organization by the fact that workers support it. Because I can show more workers supporting the Republican Party, for that matter, than support Jesse Jackson. It -Nat Weinstein doesn't change the nature of the Republican or Democratic parties by the fact that workers have been swindled and suckered into supporting these parties.

As I mentioned earlier, it is the internal contradictions of capitalism that will open the door to new solutions for working people. And the new solutions will go in the direction of socialism, we believe. That's an objective reality. We will get our chance. Capitalism will bring about the objective conditions for a socialist movement to develop, very broadly, very powerfully. But it needs leadership.

You can't fool the capitalists. They don't have misleaders telling them to place their confidence in the workers, like the workers have misleaders telling them to place their confidence in the capitalists.

It's a question of the lessons of history. What we in Socialist Action are trying to do is to preserve these lessons of history, to keep them alive, to keep pointing to them, to show that this Jesse Jackson campaign is not new.

SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1987

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believe that nothing special happened. We cannot agree to this. This would be a disregard for the historical truth, disrespect for the memory of those who were innocent victims of lawless and arbitrary actions."

However, while anathematizing the political positions of Leon Trotsky, Gorbachev kept silent on the completely false and slanderous accusations which have been made over the last 50 years in the USSR and elsewhere against the founder of the Red Army, his supporters, and his allies. These accusations are still echoed today in the Soviet Union; that he was an agent of Hitler and the Mikado [Japan]; that he met [Nazi official] Rudolf Hess; that he plotted with foreign powers to break up the territory of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky is alleged to have plotted and organized terrorist acts against the leaders of the party and the Soviet state, and so on. These calumnies have been judged as "proved" by Soviet tribunals, in particular those of the three notorious "Moscow Trials" (19361938). Everybody now knows what these truths are worth.

A tissue of lies But, on the other hand, what is really proved is that the assassination of Leon Trotsky on Aug. 20, 1940, in Mexico was the work of a GPU [KGB] agent. The accusations of the "Moscow Trials" were a tissue of lies, and the assassination of Leon Trotsky a vile crime: This is the only real "historical truth."

Gorbachev announced in his speech that a commission would be formed for "examining new facts and documents pertaining to these matters." But why is a commission necessary to seek out the "historical truth?"

Do not the whole Soviet people have the right of access to the same documents? Do they not have the

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movements for social change-and that's the big Cliff Conner/ Socialist Action "Which section of the capitalist class does

'epresent? He doesn't represent any of it."

cirConner socialist Action st Action "The result of supporting capitalist candidates like Jesse Jackson is that he inevitably must make compromises."