International Viewpoint

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SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1991 6 raises clear demands that go to the heart of solving the economic and social problems of the entire working class and its natural allies-oppressed nationalities, women, farmers, professionals, and other middle-class victims of the deepening crisis of capitalism.

A very brief outline of what such a program should look like follows:

Economic demands:

• A shorter work week with no reduction in pay.

For most working people today, jobs are at the center of their concerns. Despite talk about an end to the recession, the economy continues to falter and unemployment deepens. There is no good reason for tolerating this plague.

Modern industrial technology advances every year, leading to ever more goods produced by fewer workers. But instead of the increasing abundance of wealth created by working people leading to shorter hours and higher pay, increasing numbers of people wind up on the unemployment rolls. forms of workers' income-from wages to unemployment insurance and social security pensions-indexed to the rising cost of living.

• Abolish all restrictions on the right to strike and to freely picket struck workplaces. All such restrictions violate freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed by the first 10 amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

It should be noted, however, that labor history shows these rights are won only in struggle. The great labor victories of the 1930s were characterized by mass defiance of court injunctions limiting pickets to an ineffectual few.

Since that time, the right to picket has been gradually eroded, so that scabs can be herded into struck plants to break strikes and steal jobs. It is time for the trade-union movement to fight back with both hands.

Effective picketing that can close down struck plants must again become our "left hook." And an independent labor party based on the unions must become our "right cross." With this one-two punch, we pers, radio, and TV. They use these instruments to manipulate public opinion with half-truths, outright lies, and slander to turn worker against worker.

The basic strategy of the ruling rich is to play one part of the working class against another—white against Black, men against women, skilled against unskilled, young against old, etc. Divide and conquer is the name of their game. How else can the tiny minority of millionaires and billionaires rule over the vast majority of working people and their natural allies?

One of the turn-of-the-century robber barons of capitalism bragged that he could "hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." That was only a slight exaggeration. The bosses systematically use the mass media to instill racist, sexist, religious, and xenophobic prejudices in the minds of working people. Their control over who works and who doesn't is then used to intensify the competition for jobs, which provides the material substance to feed the prejudices they nurture among us.

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Following is the speech by Tony Maz-