'Big Red' Fred

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6 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1988 the independent antiwar movement into capitalist electoral political campaigns.

And we remember his quiet voice grow louder, louder and louder, his face twisted and his whole arm extended, in a passionate defense of orienting toward the American GI's and the working class.

He was already in his 40's—old by our standards. But his voice articulated the militancy of a new generation of rebels. He taught us how to fight.

Thousands of young militants identified with him; and he with us. His experience and training in a revolutionary party prepared him for that role. And in that way, perhaps, he served best as a model for young people.

Many of us owe Fred a debt for serving as a national leader of the I first met Fred in 1946 at public forums of the Socialist Workers Party shortly after we were both discharged from the Navy at the end of World War II. We became close friends, sharing a room at his mother's house, attending UCLA, shipping out as merchant seamen for a while, and ultimately in joining the SWP.

I remember Fred as a big man—not only physically, but in his generosity toward his friends and the people he worked with. He had the capacity to feel passionately about the injustices of capitalism and the struggles of workers in every country.

My children knew him as "Big Red Fred." They and the coming generation of young militants in factories and on

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Socialist Action National Committee endorses SWP presidential ticket An Action Program to Defend the Rights of Working People At its May 7-8 plenary session, the National Committee of Socialist Action decided to give critical support to Socialist Workers Party candidates for U.S. president and vice president, James Warren and Kathleen Mickells. The decision is a concrete expression of Socialist Action's principled stand in favor of independent working-class political action.

The SWP election platform puts human needs above profits. It is oriented primarily toward defending the interests of American workers in the face of the ongoing attack by the capitalist class.

A recent Warren/Mickells campaign leaflet features the demand for a 30-hour work week with no cut in pay as a key means for combating capitalist unemployment. Their platform also calls for a massive public works program to build and repair schools, clinics, housing, and transportation in order to provide more jobs and at the same time meet pressing social needs.

The Warren/Mickells platform also raises important social and political issues, advancing class interests such as affirmative action for Blacks and others who have suffered from racist hiring practices. It also calls for opposition to American imperialist military intervention throughout the world.

Break with Trotskyism

However, while the SWP has maintained a principled stand in opposition to the American labor bureaucracy's shameful policy of supporting capitalist party candidates and is still on record in favor of labor breaking from the two capitalist parties and founder of the SWP, is also being gradually relegated to the shadowy corners of the party's history.

Tail-ending the Stalinists

More recently, following the logic of this break with its past, the SWP has given political support in South Africa to the Stalinist-dominated, pro-capitalist African National Congress. (The ANC opposes Black majority rule and is programmatically committed to restricting African workers to demands which do not conflict with capitalist interests.)

The SWP has gone so far as to rewrite its political evaluation of the unfolding South African revolution. Its excellent James Warren for U.S. president Kathleen Mickells for vice-president exclusive positions, and one or the other must ultimately prevail. Unfortunately, the SWP's trend away from revolutionary Marxism foreshadows further retreats and a more definitive abandonment of the principle of class independence.

Centrality of class independence The principle of class independence has significance that goes far beyond electoral policy. The logic of supporting capitalist politicians-even as a so-called lesser evil-inexorably leads to supporting capitalists on the economic plane as well.

More exactly, electoral class collaboration is generally a result, not a cause. It begins when labor bureaucrats myopically working class, and vice versa.

Based on their false conception of class partnership, the bureaucrats advocate wage and benefit givebacks to keep "their" bosses from closing down their jobs. That's why they cry for protectionist trade laws-a policy that pits American workers against their brothers and sisters in other lands.

And the ultimate idiot logic of such class collaborationist policies is reached when labor and reformist bureaucrats support "their" capitalist government when it wages war—which in the last analysis is the pursuit of capitalist economic interests by other means.

But here, too, more is involved than the class immorality of pitting worker against worker: Givebacks don't save jobs; they only depress all wage levels!

Wage or benefit concessions to one's own employer to keep him from closing down jobs cannot save an inefficient enterprise from being ruined by its more efficient competitors. Besides, concessions generally lead to the more efficient capitalist insisting on the same sacrifices from his own workers.

This leads to a vicious circle of wage and benefit cuts, with each giveback whetting the capitalist appetite for more. Such a policy can only lead to economic disaster for all working people.

Guide for effective action The question of class independence is organically connected to another vital working-class principle-class solidarity.

Class solidarity begins on the shop floor and is extended to unite all workers— regardless of their occupation, race, sex, or