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'The Bush administration and the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union have found a common 12 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 On Sept. 15, 1989, Kevin Pursglove, host and moderator of KOED-FM National Public Radio's popular program Forum, invited representatives of three alternate political parties to comment on the domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration.

The show opened with the introduction of the three participants: Jeff Mackler, Co-National Secretary of Socialist Action; Kendra Alexander, Northern California Chair of the Communist Party, and Jim Perrin, Chair of the San Francisco Libertarian Party. For reasons of space, we have edited the transcript and omitted the remarks of the Libertarian Party representative.the editors KQED: Good morning. I'm Kevin Pursglove. Here's the lineup for Forum today. We turn to an assessment of the policies and plans of the Bush administration.

First of all, let's take a look at some of the domestic issues. The president's gotten a lot of attention this week because of his proposed fight on drugs. Let's start with you Mr. Mackler. Do you agree with what the president's been saying so far?

Jeff Mackler: I think the president's war on drugs is fairly close to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty of the '60s. It's a program that's designed to ignore or distort the issues by placing the blame on the victim as opposed to those who profit from the multi-billion dollar drug industry. The real issues involved are not addressed by either the Democratic or Republican parties which have a bipartisan policy on this question.

The central question is why do people take drugs? The increase in drug use indicates a deep demoralization that a large sector of our society feels because of lack of jobs and increasing poverty. In this context, drugs are an escape from a society which seems to provide little hope.

The Bush administration proposes greater punishment for the victims of its social policies. It proposes to employ more police, build more jails and courts, and stiffen the penalties while at the same time maintaining the minimum wage which is in itself inadequate to provide a decent standard of living.

KQED: If the communists were in power, or if you had access to the president at this stage of the game, would you encourage a tremendous movement toward the prevention and therapy aspects of the problem and reduce drastically the money spent on enforcement?

Kendra Alexander: I would do two things. I would spend the most money on trying to prevent the drugs from coming into the United States, border interdiction, trying to stop it there. Second, I would try to spend it on treatment and try to get people to correct the problem.

Mackler: Well if Socialist Action were in power, which is the question you asked Kendra, we wouldn't have a government where drugs were profitable. We wouldn't have a society where a few billionaires make money on drugs.

KQED: It now looks like we're going to have some kind of reform in this country on the capital gains tax. The Bush administration has been in favor of this and the word from Capitol Hill is that the Democrats are coming up with a plan that the Bush administration can live with. Is the idea of a reduction in the capital gains tax a good idea or a bad idea?

Mackler: Today you'll read in the headlines that the House Committee dealing with this subject voted to approve and send to the floor a proposal to reduce the capital gains tax. It was Bush's proposal, but again, it was a bipartisan decision with the Democratic Party joining the Republicans in giving more tax breaks to the rich while working people and the poor pay more.

It was blatantly motivated on these grounds, a tax break for the rich on the theory that people who trade in stocks, usually people of considerable wealth, would be able to turn over their profits faster and invest them in job-creating businesses. It's an example of the so-called trickle down economic theory which in reality widens the gap between the rich and poor.

KQED: Let me touch on one more domestic issue and then we'll move into the area of foreign policy. What's your assessment of the Congressional plan as was pushed by the Bush administration in relation to the savings and loan crisis?

Mackler: Again, it's a multi-billion dollar bailout of the rich. One-third of the money that's been lost was a direct product of graft on the part of savings and loan officials. The Congressional proposals are aimed at the American people, the ultimate payers, bailing out the billionaires again.

KQED: If the Socialist Action party were to sit in on the cabinet meeting, or if you had your own government—if you were to assume power right now through the electoral process, or if you were to have a major chair on that cabinet table, how would you have dealt with the savings and loan problem?

Mackler: In order to leap to the hypothetical level of Socialist Action in power, you have to also assume the premise that there is an aroused population of working people and their allies among Blacks and women who desire to change society in their great majority. They are proceeding to build institutions to do that. In the course of doing that they would eliminate all those institutions purely profit-for rich.

We would have a nationalized banking system where investment was for human needs, decided upon democratically by the workers. Capitalist society doesn't provide for democThe same Bush who is reducing the capital gains taxes, in alliance with the Democrats, is dead opposed to the democratic right of women to choose abortion-to control their reproductive functions. That's why the president of the National Organization for Women, Molly Yard, has called for a demonstration of a million people in Washington D.C., on Nov. 12.

In San Francisco we'll have a complementary demonstration on Oct. 15. These actions are called to simply defend a basic democratic right that was won by women a decade and a half ago. The rights of minorities have been slashed by the Supreme Court's attacks on affirmative action. And the rights of labor have been under constant attack on every front, from the right to defend the picket line and basic working conditions to the very right of unions to exist.

KQED: How do you grade the performance of the Bush administration in the area of foreign policy. Why don't we use the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union as a jumping-off point.

Mackler: The Bush administration and the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union have found a common interest. I think this contradicts the idea that the Soviet Union is a socialist nation. The Soviet Union is not a capitalist nation; it is a bureaucratized workers' state where the power of the workers was usurped by Stalin and a bureaucratic caste. But I don't believe the Soviet Union is a socialist nation. Socialism and democracy are synonymous.

The Soviet Union is not a democratic society in which its working people defend their own interests through their own organizations. It took some 60 years for those who support the Soviet government to admit this simple fact. This fundamental but convenient misstatement is also made daily in the media—the identification of socialism with Soviet society.

This misconception has entered our popular language. Socialism is a failure we are told, because of the now-admitted failures of the Soviet economic and political practices. The identification of the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Poland with a socialist society is an easy one but not true.

It's easy and helpful for proponents of capitalism to say, yes, if you want socialism you can have labor camps, you can have closed borders, you can have poverty, unemployment, strike-breaking, an absence of democratic rights and of workers' input, and so on. Therefore, the capitalist-owned media proclaim, capitalism is the alternative.

But there is an interesting aspect to this discussion. The Bush administration supports Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost not because it believes in democracy. If democracy were the issue, the Bush administration would not continue its friendly attitude towards China.

The issue is not democracy but the U.S. potential for profits. And that's the basis for Bush's relations with China and the Soviet Union—profit. Neither Bush nor the Democratic Party objected to China's support to Chile's dictator, Augusto Pinochet, or to its support for the terrorist army of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, or to its arming of the mass murderer Pol Pot in Cambodia, or to its invasion of Vietnam.

There was complete agreement between China and the United States on these issues. The basis for the agreement was not democracy but a deal—a deal where China's borders were opened for capitalist investment and profit in return for China's assistance in the traditional rapacious foreign-policy practices of the United States.

KQED: You see the Soviet Union and China making a mistake then and not necessarily the Bush administration.

Mackler: The reason that Gorbachev has been compelled to make the proposals that he did is that there's a rising discontent in the Soviet population. The Soviet workers themselves are beginning to raise the ideas that were raised with the original 1917 Russian Revolution-that is, working-class power as opposed to power exercised by a bureaucratic elite.

U.S. aid to Gorbachev and to Poland, as exemplified by the recent food subsidies to Poland, is designed to head off a social crisis where the real question of socialism-workers' rule-—is posed. The United States would prefer relations with the Stalinist bureaucrats, and I include Gorbachev among them, more than they would prefer having the people of the U.S.S.R. and Poland exercise power through their own instiutions.

Alexander: Well we're talking about a number of different questions. The original question was the Bush administration's relationship with the Soviet Union.

One of the most positive things that came out of the Reagan administration-and hopefully this will be followed through with the Bush administration—is a reduction in nuclear weapons. This was initiated by the Soviet Union.

The military budget is hurting the United States and it's hurting the Soviet Union. And so there has been movement in that direction. Now it needs to be faster movement. There needs to be a 50 percent reduction in nuclear weapons that will free up much more money in this country and in the Soviet Union. So that's one aspect of the problem.

There has to be continued pressure on the Bush administration to move in that direction. The other side of the question is, of course, that the Communist Party of the United States believes that the Soviet Union is a socialist country with a lot of problems.

All socialist countries have a lot of problems today. There has been a lack of democracy in these countries that has been coming back to haunt them. There's been a problem of too tight control and not enough democratic participation of the people. And of course, that's becoming a major issue and it's a healthy development that's taking place.

And you know, it rocks us who are communists to see this kind of thing happening in the socialist world. But, on the other hand, what is happening today in the Soviet Union is that Gorbachev has said, "This is what the situation is. We need more democracy. We cannot solve these problems without the full participation of our people." And so, they're beginning to correct some of these problems.

KQED: Let me ask the panelists in light of the discussion. Should the United States withdraw from NATO and bring our troops home from overseas?

Mackler: I am for the United States leaving NATO, as I am for the United States dismantling their missile bases throughout the world—hundreds of missile bases that literally surround the Soviet Union. I believe that the global U.S. military presence is the greatest danger in the world today. Capitalism's profit drive makes it inherently prone to expansion and war.

KQED: Do you want to see cutbacks in the military budget for just the philosophical reasons of what the military represents or for economic reasons or just what?

Mackler: I'd like to see not only cutbacks but a total elimination of all nuclear weapons on the part of the United States. That's where I would begin. That's the starting point. I don't think the problem in the world today is (continued on next page)

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Workers and students in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) demonstrate "The reason that Gorbachev has been compelled to raise the proposals he does is that there's a rising discontent in the Soviet population?

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an aggressive Soviet Union that threatens the world with nuclear war.

In this respect, I do make a major distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union. The profit-based capitalist system is the reason for the U.S. war drive. The Soviet bureaucracy's policies are based on seeking accommodation with the United States to preserve bureaucratic privilege, not profit.

In fact, if you take a look at the foreignpolicy discussions which are going on today you will see a worldwide rapprochement between the United States and the Soviet Union-but not a progressive one in my opinion. The aim of it is essentially to satisfy the needs of the rich in the United States and the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, on the one hand, at the expense of the people of the world on the other.

That is why Nicaragua, for example, was virtually cut off by the Soviet Union-virtually cut off and left without financial aid even in the face of the contras. This rapprochement means that the South African people who are struggling for their liberation are going to be pressed to accept a government where the fundamental institutions of wealth are controlled by the rich, a government without the more onerous aspects of apartheid and with perhaps some Black figures as window-dressing.

Alexander: The main issue is that we have to save the earth. We have to save the planet, we have to save the people. Nuclear war is unthinkable, it would destroy the world. So there has to be a decision made in the world to ban all nuclear weapons.

Now you're not going to be able to completely disband all armies. There are certain questions of national defense and so forth. Those will continue over the next period. But I am for withdrawal from NATO. I am for dismantling all the U.S. bases around the world, and I am for continuing negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Jeff [Mackler] throws in a lot of things When he speaks. You have to listen to what Daniel Ortega says about the support of the Soviet Union for Nicaragua. You have to listen to what Oliver Tambo of the African National Congress says about it.

Any statements you read from them say that there is continuing support by the Soviet Union for their liberation struggles-for the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to maintain their country. So what Jeff says is just not true. It's just not what they're saying.

KQED: If you were in power today and you were not able to totally reduce nuclear arms around the world because that's an incredibly multi-layered and complex problem, but if you had the power to recall troops to the United States, how would you respond to the governments of China, West Germany, Britain, the Republic of Korea? What would be your response to them if they said we want these troops here?

Alexander: All of this has to be on the basis of equal negotiation. The Soviet Union unilaterally stopped testing nuclear weapons, but the United States did not meet that unilateral action and, therefore, the Soviet Union was forced to restart testing. You have to have joint efforts to reduce the tension in the world. And it's a negotiated process, but it should move quicker.

Mackler: The question assumes that we're only talking about the policies of governments and in this case, practically speaking, it appears that we are. But suppose we ask the people of the world whether they want U.S. troops in their country.

Suppose we asked them whether they think the U.S. armies are protecting them against anything, or whether they are actually protecting those governments against the people themselves? Why does the United States have a hostile attitude toward the Nicaraguan people and not toward the dictatorships in Latin America that we fully support?

KQED: But you cannot take a worldwide referendum on whether or not U.S. troops should be in the Republic of Korea or Japan and so forth.":

Mackler: Well that's one of the interesting things about being on this show, Kevin. I don't envision myself trying to rationally convince the head of a government that represents the rich to disinherit the interests of the capitalist system. I think that the change to a socialist society will be a product of the overwhelming involvement of the people themselves. So yes, I must look to the people.

[The remainder of the program consisted of responses to questions phoned in by callers.] Caller: I have a question for Jeff Mackler. In a socialist society what sort of institutions do you envision that would prevent unions and other popular organizations from becoming top-down organizations that end up repressing workers' rights, as for instance in Mexico?

Mackler: The Soviet Union got its name from the Russian word soviet, which means council. These councils, established up by the Soviet people as a product of their revolution, were the most democratic institutions the world has ever known. They were literally councils of the entire population, beginning where people were engaged in work. The soviets decided virtually everything. In fact, it was literally a soviet government, not a government of the Communist Party.

It was a government of the people who had the right to immediately recall officials. The wages of officials, who were elected, were the same as the wages of skilled workers—and the decisions were made by the people themselves.

The newly organized soviets in the U.S.S.R. today are virtually powerless. They meet once a year and if they do make deci"Sons, such as the election of Gorbachev by a vote of 1500 to 0, the vote is a formality. The real power in the U.S.S.R. today still resides in the hands of an elite group of Stalinist bureaucrats in the Gorbachev core group.

Let me just take one second to respond to Kendra on the question of Soviet aid to Nicaragua and to the ANC. A book just published by Walnut Publishing Co. [the publishing house associated with Socialist Action] titled "Nicaragua: Dynamics of an Unfinished Revolution" by Alan Benjamin documents quite clearly the idea that the Soviet Union has systematically cut off aid to the Nicaraguan government. This is a central reason the Sandinista government has made concessions to the United States and the contras which undermine its national sovereignty.

We have similarly documented Soviet support for a deal in South Africa at the expense of the liberation struggle.

Alexander: First of all I think we ought to be clear about what socialism means and what a socialist country is. A socialist country is one that is economically organized so that a few people don't get rich off the coun try and that the profits made are put back into society. In the Soviet Union there continues to be free health care, education, etc., because profits are put back into it.

But the Soviet Union is having tremendous problems. You have to read the stuff that's coming out from the Soviet trade unions, for instance. They say that the problem has been that they have a trade union that's in the same council with the management and they sort of work things out together. Now that has to end.

The trade unions have to be independent of the management of industry. They have to be there for protecting the interests of the workers themselves. That's why you had the miners' strike. It was a big explosion of miners which is one of the strongest bases of socialism in the Soviet Union because they didn't feel the government nor the management was listening to their concerns about how to run the industry.

Caller: What is your view of democracy in the United States?

Mackler: Democracy in my view is very simple. It's the direct control of society by working people through their own institutions. There is no such thing in the United States.

We talked about the savings and loan issue. Who made the decision to bail them out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars? Not the American people. It was a tiny number of politicians in Congress, the same few who ripped off the billions from the HUD. Who profits from the war industries-to the tune of billions? Who makes war? The people never make those decisions. They never have any say in any of these fundamental aspects of their lives.

KQED: We have run out of time. I'd like to thank our guests. This is Kevin Pursglove of Forum.

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