Why Jesse Jackson's political star is rising

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1988 At this point in the 1988 presidential election campaign, Jesse Jackson is running in second place in what has become a two-person race for the Democratic Party nomination. Four years ago, in contrast, Jackson remained far behind throughout the Democrats' presidentialselection process.

Newsweek magazine credits Jackson's Black vote percentage "in the high 90s." This national magazine notes that while his white vote during the "Super Tuesday" primaries in Southern states was "slightly disappointing, averaging 7 percent, it runs higher in Northern states."

Exemplifying Jackson's growing appeal among whites, Newsweek reports, "In Alaska, a state whose population is only 3 percent Black, Jackson won last week's caucuses outright with 35 percent of the vote."

The same magazine's March 21 edition featured Jackson on its cover in an article characterizing him in its title as "The Power Broker." The article concludes that Jackson's new white support comes from limousine liberals, yuppie liberals, younger voters, and workers and farmers.

The report is highly dubious of Jackson's chances of winning nomination on the Democratic Party presidential slate. But the magazine believes he has emerged as a political leader capable of forcing electioncampaign platform planks on the Democratic Party.

Jackson, Newsweek says, favors "such divisive issues as gay rights and higher taxes [on the wealthy]...health and child care, education, a higher minimum wage, and legal protections for workers fighting plant closings and farmers faced with foreclosures."

Although Jackson, like all the other capitalist candidates, is vague as to how such programs will be put into effect and financed, he has come out for cuts in the military budget to pay for a portion of these costs. But, just as he is careful to make clear his support for a strong war machine—including the military defense of imperialism's allies against "communism"-many other of his proposals contradict his "progressive" stands.

One such Jackson gimmick, for instance, is his plan to pay for "reinvestment in America" with the interest earned by workers' pension funds.

Why liberals support Jackson The article also unintentionally reveals that support for Jackson from sections of the ruling class comes as a result of his ability to bring Blacks, workers, and farmers—alienated from both capitalist political parties-back into the Democratic Party, and into the capitalist political fold.

They correctly see his highly ambiguous campaign rhetoric as mere lip-service to the aspirations of working people. They also know that Jackson's demagogy is designed to sidetrack and defuse the increasingly explosive mood of discontent building up in the face of mounting economic setbacks for the most exploited layers of American society.

Jackson's appeal among these victims of American capitalism is due to his seemingly anti-capitalist demagogy. His speeches are laced with winged attacks against the "economic violence" suffered by millions.

His "ideology," Newsweek says, divides society into "those who perpetrate the 'violence' and those who are victimized by it." But Newsweek, which is in step with a general media policy of building Jackson's image, is not turned off by such hints of "class-struggle" rhetoric.

Jackson's purely demogogic aim comes through in this article. The magazine shows that he focuses his attacks exclusively on "Reaganites" as the "perpetrators" of economic violence while covering up for the Democratic Party and capitalism as a whole.

Candidate of the oppressed? the class nature of his political campaign: He has named his so-called "shadow cabinet"-those whom he would push to be included in the presidential cabinet if a Democrat wins in November.

The list of "respected" representatives of the U.S. ruling class he has drawn up includes former President Jimmy Carter; Felix Rohatyn, the banker who "saved" New York City from financial ruin in the 1970s at the expense of working people; and Jim Wright, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Newsweek notes also that Jackson doesn't hesitate to be identified with figures like Selma, Ala., Mayor Joe Smitherman, who 23 years ago unleashed the police on Blacks marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the right to vote.

Jackson campaign harms workers There is only one thing standing in the way of an effective defense of working people's interests. It is the false conception systematically imposed on workers by their misleaders that harmonious and mutually beneficial relations between exploiter and exploited is merely a matter of policy.

This is the gimmick labor's misleaders have traditionally used to justify supporting the "friends" of labor (in the Democratic Party) against its "enemies" (in the Republican Party).

This is the basic falsehood that serves to block an effective movement against capitalist exploitation and oppression. This is why American workers, objectively the most powerful in the world, have suffered one setback after another in recent years.

The working class and its natural allies are the overwhelming majority of the population. When united around their common class interests, "there is no power greater," as the labor song goes. This class solidarity is impossible to achieve, and is in diametric opposition to the notion that a partnership is possible between the capitalists and their victims.

The Jackson campaign for the Democratic Party nomination works to perpetuate the myth of a community of interest between capitalists and their victims. Jackson's political message is entirely designed to hang the hopes of the masses on the good will of "good" capitalist politicians.

His message works objectively as well to (continued on page 6)