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We welcon our reader keep them necessary, abridged. Dear editor, I was interested in the interview with Ralph Schoenman in your May 1988 issue in which he discusses the responses to an ad placed in the March 13, 1988, New York Times calling for an "end to all aid to apartheid Israel."

I thought that Socialist Action readers would be interested to know that, 18 years ago, I was one of a number of Black American educators, writers, and political activists who also placed an ad in the Times. It appeared in the newspaper on Nov. 1, 1970, shortly after King Hussein of Jordan ordered a massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians living in that country.

Our ad demanded that all aid to Israel be stopped immediately and underscored Yassir Arafat's call for "a democratic, secular, non-racial state where all Palestinians— Christians, Jews, and Muslims—will have equal rights."

The Committee of Black Americans for Truth about the Middle East, which sponsored the ad, received many warm letters of support after the ad appeared. But an equal number of obscene and racist letters were also sent to us from people who professed to be supporters of Israel.

Some letters warned us: "Death to all traitors!" Since that time, I believe, Americans have become more open-minded towards the cause of justice for the Palestinians.

Kwame M.A. Somburu, Oakland, Calif.

We welcome letters from letters fror Please keep them short. When nort. When necessary, they will be ey will be Dear editor, In his article in the May issue of Socialist Action, "The real meaning of the Jackson phenomenon," Joe Ryan has decidedly pointed out the traps the Jackson campaign has laid for Blacks and the working class.

Ryan also touched on the the dual character of the Jackson campaign, pointing out that a large number of white workers have stepped out from behind their racism and voted for a Black presidential candidate.

I believe Ryan is correct when he concluded: "The 'Jackson phenomenon' is a symptom that the nearly 40-year period of relative working-class conservatism is coming to an end."

But realizing the beginning of the end of working-class conservatism, and having a program that can reach out to those workers, Black and white, that will move even more to the left than just voting for a Black presidential candidate is another matter.

This is where Ryan and Socialist Action come up short in all the articles I have read in your paper. You state well what is happening, but you don't state what is necessary to start to bring about a change in consciousness that leads to actionlike vote socialist or don't vote at all.

A revolutionary newspaper must do more than just report and interHAVe A RIGHT pret the facts. It must, in addition, analyze and give direction to the working class, to raise its class consciousness in the effort to accelerate it on the road to revolution.

This can be done in one way: by raising transitional slogans and demands that cause the working class to think about our situation. This will also begin the groundwork that is necessary, so when the working class starts to move, it will look to revolutionary communism as the answer to its future.

That brings me to the question. What does Socialist Action propose that revolutionary workers and socialists do in the 1988 elections? Writing news articles is simply not enough.

Larry E. Murdock, New York, N.Y. torate, or for that matter by "president?"

Such a system would ensure that the contras' real goal, "provisions to strengthen guarantees to private property," would never be enacted. It would give the civil opposition (including the many workers now on strike in Nicaragua) a fair, democratic chance to actually participate in the polítical process.

Tom Smith, Jamaica, N.Y.

A National Assembly of democratically elected and revokable delegates from the working-class and mass organizations to which the FSLN government would be responsible and accountable-would help steer the revolution on a consistent proletarian course.

But the 17 constitutional reforms sought by the contras and their inwith the Soviet government. The plan allows foreign investors to hold a 49 percent equity in Soviet industrial facilities."

"The Soviet bureaucracy," Weinstein continues, "appears to have embarked on a calculated course toward giving world capitalism a material reason for long-term peaceful relations—a foothold within the Soviet economy."

In raising this important question, Weinstein's conclusion contradicts the statement that "the arms race can only end in nuclear annihilation." There could be a rapprochement. And there could be a stable detente based upon arms lim50th itation.

U.S. capitalism is following a policy of production for waste in an effort to sustain its economy. ... The SDI is only a new version of production of military waste as an economic measure. ... This is the outcome of capitalist anarchy.

Atomic war has been impossible as a [U.S.] policy since the Soviet Union obtained the H-bomb in 1954. Detente has been the limit of that policy, because an actual war would be suicidal.

The contradiction in Weinstein's article stems from the Trotskyist dedication to the defense of the Soviet Union, which has failed to recognize the fact that the Soviet Union long ago became able to defend itself.

A correction is long overdue, since it prevents proper exposure of bourgeois demagogy in both cultivating fear of the Soviet Union and as a means of supporting production for profit through waste by the military-industrial complex.

The task of exposing the demagogy is inextricably linked to a renewed attack on capitalist anarchy and the need of production for use and not for profit. That goal would encourage and require socialization, thus leading for a struggle for power by the working class. That's the real answer to the threat of atomic war.

Atomic war is possible as an accident or, remotely, as a military adventure. But not as a deliberate policy. The bourgeoisie will not commit suicide in pursuit of economic objectives. That theory is irrational dogma.

Nat Simon, New York, N.Y.

iversary rally

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TO eXIST. Mike Keafe THE DEWER POSTER

ANOTHER CONVeRT, SIR!