Why we need a labor party OCAW's secretary treasurer Tony Mazzocchi says the time is now for labor to form their own political party

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Were convinced now—after walking arioss tans cornny and talking bro garoups in wurious pants or Thne counting that turking promplane andy to-talkie one-stego fossan om creating a politicall They're in county government. But the phy. Workers in phy. Workers in a small town, Mormon sum total of them would fit in this room communities in Utah, respond precisely the and there would still be some empty chairs. same way workers in a major urban area J01 of he Ity ulOu t's lan the ers od.

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tion If you look at the campaign contributions that float into both parties, you'll see that they really come from essentially the same sources, big industry, big construction firms, investment interests.

And it is very difficult for us to carry on a political dialogue in a situation where corporations control every avenue of expression. The media is totally controlled by big business. And working people really have very little power to change things through the existing political parties.

Now I don't believe we can change that over night. I believe that first of all, we have to advance our interests so the public can respond to the issues as we frame them. And they have got to be directly framed issues of full employment, full income, the question of national health insurance. The whole litany of issues that advance working people's interests have to be up there in advance of any other issues.

We have to be hammering away at that. We have to organize ourselves into a large movement. We can't do it within an anti-union climate where both parties are afraid to even move issues that will allow us a level playing field to allow us to organize workers.

"Move along in steps."

A labor party that I would propose would move along in steps. One, we'd have to organize ourselves in substantial numbers—not run anybody for election-but essentially organize a large group of people who then would develop a constitution and then a series of issues; also newspapers and other means public expression where we could begin to hammer out a cadence around the nation from our particular viewpoint that would effect the agenda of both political parties.

Right now, both political being tugged by the corporations and labor's voice is miniscule. A political party that would pose a threat to the existing Republican and Democratic parties, just the mere threat of it's existence would do more to capture the attention of the existing political parties.

We can't do it by constantly throwing money at them. You get their attention for about five minutes when you bring in the big check, and right after that they forget who you are and proceed to forget until they come up for election a few years hence.

That situation assumes that we're fools. I've been in the labor movement 45 years. And I've just decided that we are fools because any system [in which] you're constantly raising money for politicians and approaching them with a naiveté that we wouldn't approach our boss at the bargaining table with, and just assuming that if we give them money, that we can somehow influence them to vote our way.

Well, I've dealt with the Oil Workers for most of my life, knowing that the sum total of money that we could collect in this movement and give to a legislator, the oil industry could pack in a black bag and persuade legislators directly or indirectly to advance their interests.

And multi-national corporations have demonstrated that to us. They've diminished our wages. They've scabbed our jobs abroad. They've created the worst working conditions that I've seen in the entire postwar period.

They've put us up against the wall. We've been fighting defensive struggles. It's rare that we win a struggle. There are some victories-they're so few and far between that all of us are very proud of them. And we wave the flag of those few victories because we have to rally around some flag.

"Organize in a serious way"

I would submit that the way to turn this around is to demonstrate that we're tired of it, that we understand the way the system works, and that we're going to organize in a very serious way.

Not just rhetorical, not just waving the flag and saying we're going to do this, that, and the other tomorrow. But organizing like we would organize a major corporation, long-view, organize in small committees to organize larger committees until at the appropriate time we're able to call for an election.

In the case of organizing [a union at] a large company, you call for an NLRB election. In case of a political party, I would submit that what we are establishing in Labor Party Advocates is a political party.

It is organizing members. We need 100,000 members before we're even able to make a major political pronouncement. After we consult with the people who've joined [together] in a convention, we'll formulate what our program should be.

One hundred thousand members—we would be at the beginning of a movement that I think can shake the major political parties to at least begin to understand that there are alternatives. Working people want alternatives.

The alternative they're choosing today is "none of the above. " Sixty-five percent of the people don't vote, and it's not because they're stupid or apathetic. They don't vote because they don't see what voting will get them. They really feel that there's very little choice.

I substantially agree. There's choice by nuance. Some elected officials express themselves a bit differently on the issues. There are a handful of people that are true friends of working people. They're in Congress. They're in the state houses.

I WORKERS COMM KCA aultrenunautirres "We asked the rank and file"

So given that situation, I submit, the time is now. It's not an easy task, and it's not a popular task. I'm an international [union] officer and I consort with other international officers in the trade union movement, and I can tell you this is not a popular thing to do. But it's popular with the rank and file.

The reason I say that is that we've been conducting polls. I started with my own union because there was a resolution at one of our conventions saying you ought to talk to the rank and file. I always think that's a good idea that too many of us forget in this movement.

We went out to our rank and file, and we essentially asked them how they felt about the political parties in existence. And we were very much surprised when 60 percent catagorically rejected both the parties, and 60 percent said it's time to form a labor party.

And I thought, maybe because we work with a lot of toxic substances, our brains were a little different than our fellow trade unionists, but then we began to convince unions, construction trades, public sector, white collar workers. We have conducted polls across the [whole] spectrum of working people through their organizations.

I can now predict any poll that you would conduct among your own local unions. I have no fear of contradiction because, of 50 or 60 locals we've polled, the results all come in the same.

They're the same by gender, they're the same by race, they're the same by geograWhen h MILO LAML not for concess off....

WANNG PARENTS' Well, ing wit very na the assembl picked they en Democi defeat. ' ence, ar thi we're g And the gov Dave Newman/Impact Visualo an abse in the s blinker pened. offs, because with th And time be ing ou would There picket In th the san to give of Nei would respond. There is no difference at all. places We find the only difference is in the ages spent n 55 to 65. The respondees tend to be a bit With fi more conservative, not appreciatively oblivio more, but a bit more. They want to work I'm : more with the existing political parties. ries of The younger workers are totally rejecting when t [this approach] right up the line. You con- weak-k duet a noll in vour nwn union. We've when y developed all the polling data. We've devel- ly. Th oped computer programs to interpret the have to data. You'll see that the figures I'm using want al will hold up generally. one, I We're convinced now-after walking So, across this country and talking to groups in ask yo various parts of the country-that working the La people are ready to take one step forward on you a creating a political alternative. bucks The mere fact that we would meet to discuss and argue among ourselves what a But political agenda should consist of will effort 1 shake politicians appreciably, and rather ple. It' than having continuing attacks on people, The they would have to be taking note that low. I we're ready and prepared to contest at some our ot point in time. We're "Friends" in New Jersey? who y Hopel Now all our "friends" are deserting us. I incom come out of New Jersey. I work in Denver, organt but I live in New Jersey. And the Commu- NOT nications Workers of America (CWA) numbr represent all the state workers in New Jer- the co sey. They've just gone through an We'v incredible experience, because we broke our solicit neck collectively-the UAW, the CWA, we've the building trades, the industrial unions— the lis to elect who they perceive to be a pro-labor Las governor-Gov. Jim Florian. an ex

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to represent everybody." Well, I don't arross tines coummmy aun taulkang tro groups in various parts of the countrythat working people are ready to take one step forward on creating a political SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1991 11 OLA They're in county government. But the sum total of them would fit in this room and there would still be some empty chairs.

"We asked the rank and file"

So given that situation, I submit, the time is now. It's not an easy task, and it's not a popular task. I'm an international [union] officer and I consort with other international officers in the trade union movement, and I can tell you this is not a popular thing to do. But it's popular with the rank and file.

The reason I say that is that we've been conducting polls. I started with my own union because there was a resolution at one of our conventions saying you ought to talk to the rank and file. I always think that's a good idea that too many of us forget in this movement.

We went out to our rank and file, and we essentially asked them how they felt about the political parties in existence. And we were very much surprised when 60 percent catagorically rejected both the parties, and 60 percent said it's time to form a labor party.

And I thought, maybe because we work with a lot of toxic substances, our brains were a little different than our fellow trade unionists, but then we began to convince unions, construction trades, public sector, white collar workers. We have conducted polls across the [whole] spectrum of working people through their organizations.

I can now predict any poll that you would conduct among your own local unions. I have no fear of contradiction because, of 50 or 60 locals we've polled, the results all come in the same.

They're the same by gender, they're the same by race, they're the same by geograMILU VARL FRANG PARENTS alternatine.

phy. Workers in a small town, Mormon communities in Utah, respond precisely the same way workers in a major urban area would respond. There is no difference at all.

We find the only difference is in the ages 55 to 65. The respondees tend to be a bit more conservative, not appreciatively more, but a bit more. They want to work more with the existing political parties.

The younger workers are totally rejecting [this approach] right up the line. You conduct a poll in your own union. We've developed all the polling data. We've developed computer programs to interpret the data. You'll see that the figures I'm using will hold up generally.

We're convinced now—after walking across this country and talking to groups in various parts of the country-that working people are ready to take one step forwara on creating a political alternative.

The mere fact that we would meet to discuss and argue among ourselves what a political agenda should consist of will shake politicians appreciably, and rather than having continuing attacks on people, they would have to be taking note that we're ready and prepared to contest at some point in time.

"Friends" in New Jersey?

Now all our "friends" are deserting us. I come out of New Jersey. I work in Denver, but I live in New Jersey. And the Communications Workers of America (CWA) represent all the state workers in New Jersey. They've just gone through an incredible experience, because we broke our neck collectively-the UAW, the CWA, the building trades, the industrial unionsto elect who they perceive to be a pro-labor governor-Gov. Jim Florian.

He was the guy that was going to subscribe to labor's program. He appointed a former business agent of the ILGWU as labor commissioner. Well, negotiations came up-the state is in fiscal trouble like every other state in the country-and the govemor, friend of labor (the CWA characterized him as "our friend"), came out and called for the abrogation of the contract— wanting the workers to take concessions and wanting to lay off 8500 workers and destroy the contract.

That was while he was their "friend." When he became their enemy, he ended up not forwarding or advancing one single concession unless 8000 workers were laid off. ...

Well, what turned the enemy into agreeing with the CWA position? There was a very narrow balance in the assembly, but the Democrats controlled the assembly. What the CWA did was that they picked all the marginal districts out and they entered 17 candidates and said to the Democratic Party, "You're going down to defeat. Those 17 candidates are the difference, and we may not elect our people but Insin" prosition: arm waitzan elec we're going to defeat you."

And those legislators refused to accept the governor's proposal, and the CWA won an absolute victory. The largest newspaper in the state said that the union stabbed the governor in the eye, and the governor blinked. And that's precisely what happened. No concessions, less than 2000 lay offs, contracts are intact. And that's because they decided they're going to break with the party.

And it was a disgusting spectacle at the time because the labor commissioner, coming out of the labor movement, said he would be the first to cross the picket line. There were reportedly scabs to break the picket line.

In the next state, New York, you have the same thing-fiscal crisis, workers have to give up benefits, take lay-offs. The city of New York-same thing. These are places where labor broke their necks and spent millions of dollars to elect "friends." With friends like that, we're on the road to oblivion.

I'm sure you have your own set of stories of betrayals by politicians. And even when there aren't betrayals, they're just weak-kneed politicians who'll back down when you ask them something substantively. Their position always is, "Well, we have to represent everybody." Well, I don't want an elected official to represent everyone, I want him to represent us.

So, I come before you this evening to ask you to consider joining the party called the Labor Party Advocates. It won't get you a thing initially. It'Il cost you 20 bucks a year. You'll get a couple newsletters.

But you're going to be part of a national effort that's seeking to recruit 100,000 people. It's part of an organizing drive.

The expectation level should be kept low. I think we should be modest about our objectives. This is a formidable task. We're looking to recruit 5000 organizers who would volunteer to organize others. Hopefully, we can generate sufficient income to where we can hire full-time organizers.

Now, we're in a period of agitation. A number of us are beginning to go around the country and speak to various meetings. We've been asking for lists so we can solicit people through the mail, and so far we've been getting a 10 percent return on the lists that we've been getting.

Last week, for the first time, we're doing an experiment. We've got 10 local unions Tony Mazzocchi at S.F. labor council «Well, we name trenk critician tro one, I want nimu represent us.

scattered around the United States, various international unions, who've submitted their membership lists to us with the approval or their executive boards. We're doing a direct solicitation to their members.

We don't expect a large return. If we get a one percent return, that would generate enough money to continue to mail. At least the organization will then get its name out to the people.

And we're interested in getting it out before the people. Not recruiting from the top down, but from the bottom up. This has got to be an organization that has real members, not local unions that say they represent X-amount of members.

But we need real people scattered through out the United States. Members of unions and people who don't belong to unions, people who work. And I use the term working people generically. It covers everyone who works for wages or should be working for wages if we had a just society.

Briefly, that's what we're about to do. I have no doubt there's a million people out there who'd join. The question is reaching them. It's not a question of convincing them. I find wherever I go in the United States, and I do travel quite extensively, I have found no difference in response, whatever sector of the United States I have visited.

People are disgusted with the existing political process. They've abandoned it. They don't believe in it. We are weakened as a trade-union movement because we're constantly telling people to get out for Joe Shmo or Joe Blow or Katherine Shmo or Katherine Blow, and it's the same situation.

We disillusion people because we never get those legislators to accept even the most primary program that we put forward.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity and I'd be happy to take questions.

For more information about Labor Party Advocates write to:

Labor Party Advocates P.O. Box 1510 Highland Park, New Jersey 08904-9998

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...Upheaval in the Soviet union *The unspoken real issue dividing the "Communist" bureaucrats was whether or not the CPSU could stay in control over the process of 12 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1991 (continued from page I) side, and "hardline communists defending socialism," on the other.

Nothing could be further from the truth. All major currents in the state apparatus including national and local parliamentary bodies-support the reintroduction of capitalism.

The fundamental difference between them was whether it was possible to continue the process of capitalist restoration by political means, or whether an iron-fisted dictatorship was necessary to impose the anti-working-class measures this policy requires.

The desertions from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) by lifelong Stalinist bureaucrats like Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze heralded and helped trigger the attempted coup which turns out to have been the last desperate effort to save the party-the main instrument of bureaucratic rule-from destruction.

Yeltsin and Shevardnadze, and others who had earlier abandoned the CPSU, had come to the conclusion that it was no longer possible for the bureaucracy as a whole to control the privatization process it had begun.

The unspoken real issue dividing the "Communist" bureaucrats was whether or not the CPSU could stay in control over the process of capitalist restoration. The real aim of the leaders of the coup, who at that point were the real leaders of the CPSU and the bureaucratic apparatus as a whole, was to strengthen the bureaucracy's strategic position so that it could end up as the major stockholders in a privatized economy.

The Communist Party ceased being communist when Stalin assumed dictatorial control over the party that led the Russian workers to victory. It became the institution by which the bureaucracy exercised its political dictatorship. It became the centralized instrument for the ruthless crushing of any resistance to privileges rivaling those of millionaires and billionaires in wealthy capitalist countries.

This last-ditch desperate attempt to maintain the solidarity of the bureaucracy in their campaign to transform themselves from a privileged caste into a property owning capitalist class was decisively rejected by a spontaneous uprising of the peoples of this land.

All serious observers, who have visited any of the so-called "socialist countries" since the revolution that swept across Eastern Europe at the end of 1989, could not help but see the indignant hostility of the working classes there toward the Stalinist bosses.

Especially repugnant to the masses of workers was the drive by the "Communist" bureaucrats to rip-off nationalized industry for a song. This is backed up by reports in the mass media documenting how "Communist" bureaucrats heading nationalized enterprises were discovered to have "sold," the same enterprises to themselves, and for a fraction of their values!

Another factor triggering the attempted coup was the new union treaty Gorbachev was scheduled to sign, which would give a greater measure of independence to the republics clamoring for the right to self-determination.

The failure of the coup, of course, has made the concessions made by Gorbachev in the proposed union treaty far from adequate. Republic after republic has since declared its unqualified independencewhich they are backing up by closing Communist Party newspapers, driving the party out of the workplaces, confiscating the billions in property the CPSU has amassed, and effectively destroying it as the main political instrument of bureaucratic rule.

It will be extremely difficult now for the bureaucracy and its allies to organize a new, effective, instrument to carry through the restoration of capitalism What underlies the crisis?

An explanation for the crisis which led to the attempted coup is not hard to find.

capitalist restoration.

The Soviet economy was and is spiraling downward, prices and unemployment are spiraling upward, and the patience of the Soviet working class is wearing thin. As bad as things were before 1985—before Gorbachev launched the current campaign to reintroduce a market-driven economy— conditions are worse now than ever.

The capitalist world explains the crisis as being the result of Gorbachev's half-measures—that he hadn't gone far or fast enough toward privatizing the nationalized economy. There is a grain of truth to this, but it's not because Gorbachev and the bureaucracy as a whole have not been doing their utmost to carry it through. There are two basic obstacles standing in the way of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, as well as in all of Eastern Europe.

• The first obstacle is the refusal of working people to accept the prerequisites of a market economy-the most important of which is the abolition of their guaranteed right to a job.

Capitalist market relations require that working people be at the complete mercy of the boss. They must be denied the fundamental security of a right to a job. And they must be denied the fundamental right to the basic necessities of life—not as charity, or as a dole, but as a right to sufficient food, clothing, shelter, medical care, vacations.

Moreover, they must be denied the system of retirement pensions, still relatively intact, that permit retired workers to live out the rest of their years in dignity.

Before there can be a "self-regulating," market-driven economy, employers must have the basic right to hire and fire. Prices of everything from food and rent, to labor power (wages), must be free to find their own levels on the market place-to rise and fall according to the economic laws of capitalism.

To carry this out requires in the very first instance the abolition of the guarantee, in effect for over 70 years in the Soviet Union, that when workers are unemployed for shorter or longer periods, they continue to enjoy an essentially undiminished standard of living until they are assigned another job. This means that unemployment cannot be used as a weapon to force workers into a desperate competition for jobs such as is the norm in all capitalist countries.

The right to hire and fire enables the bosses in all capitalist countries to drastically reduce wages-and thus raise profits. Trade unions constitute an attempt by workers in capitalist countries to unite as sellers of labor power so that they can gain the highest possible price, or wages, and establish a force-the union and its institutions, committees, stewards, etc.—to maintain their gains.

The Russian Revolution is, in a manner of speaking, the equivalent of unions and other workers' class institutions taking over the state and putting a floor under wages that cannot be reduced except by counterrevolution.

Thus, before the present ruling caste and its allies can achieve their goal they must abolish the system of full social security for every child, every senior citizen, every worker, before capitalism can take root and flower.

These guarantees, any capitalist country, are a direct product of their planned economic system. And although big inroads into these conquests have been made in some of these countries, it remains a qualitative obstruction to the market system. These rights can be abolished only by dealing the working class a decisive defeat.

Gorbacher gets cold shoulder • The second obstacle is the refusal, thus far, of the world's bankers and capitalists to invest their money in the Soviet economy. Soviet bureaucrats and entrepeneurs don't have the kind of money required to pay for or modernize the Soviet economy. And capitalists don't lend money if they think the borrower will not be able to pay it back-and with "reasonable" profits to boot. So far, every effort by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, or the so-called "hardliners" to get the Soviet workers to accept the sacrifices necessary for guaranteed profits has failed.

When the Group of Seven, an economic association of the seven most powerful imperialist nations, met just a few months ago, Gorbachev went there hat in hand. He desperately sought to convince them that capitalist restoration depended on their willingness to put up some real money to give their common project a chance at success.

Gorbachev was given little more than friendly pats on the back for his efforts, but no real cash. In fact, the Aug. 19 edition of The New York Times, which was published just hours before the coup, headlined the response of capitalist bankers to the Soviet economic crisis as follows: "Shortage of Cash keeps Soviets Out of World Markets-Banks Shunning Loans-Efforts by Western Leaders to Mesh Moscow Into Global Economy Undermined."

The Times piece led off with this essence of the report. It read:

"Even as President Bush and other Western leaders take steps to integrate the Soviet Union into the world economy, a crippling shortage of foreign currency is forcing the Soviets to retreat from global trade and financial markets."

A few paragraphs later, they wrote: "International banks not only are refusing to issue new loans to Moscow, but have declined to renew nearly $20 billion of old loans ... Such short-term loans for most large borrowers are routinely reissued at the prevailing interest rate as they come due." The rest of the piece details a sharp decline in bank loans, not to mention that the world's capitalists have come up with no new aid or assistance. Scariest of all, perhaps, was the difficulty the bureaucracy had in borrowing a mere $600 million for grain imports even though 98 percent of the principal and most of the interest was guaranteed by the U.S. government.

This story was preceded about a week before by reports of an uproar over a deal involving a projected investment of billions of dollars by Chevron, the giant American oil corporation. The tentative agreement was for development of relatively untapped Soviet oil reserves, said to be several times larger than the huge oil fields in Alaska.

Furthermore, the reports at that time indicated that there was widespread criticism of the deal as a giant rip-off of the Soviet Union's natural wealth by Chevron. The two main criticisms were that Chevron's commitment of capital was miniscule compared to the amount to be put up by the Soviet government, and that under-the-table payoffs had been made by Chevron to Communist Party bureaucrats.

Will workers accept sacrifices?

Clearly, workers need to see hard evidence of better times to come before they will accept further sacrifices and wind up with all the disadvantages of capitalism, but with none of the hoped-for advantages.

They need to see an inflow of capital being put to work modernizing their economy so that-they hope-a capitalist Russia could compete effectively on the world market. That is, they want to see at least the promise of Western living standards not far down the road. Otherwise, they are not willing to sink deeper into a system that might land them into the capitalism of the 1930s' Depression-if not that of underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa today.

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the Soviet Union, witnessed the events An eyewitness to coup resistance ist Action spoke to him on Aug. 25. So they had all that in place early the Russians. The idea that Red Army Excerpts from the interview appear below, Wednesday. It was a frantic effort. You troops would kill Russians-there was and larger portions will be published in couldn't sleep Tuesday evening because of just fury, and that was the end of the were so many people, you couldn't move So everything stopped in Moscow.

When I got to the barricades early in the in the center of Moscow. morning lin Moscow, on Aug. 21], the The interesting thing was—and it was Square against demonstrations, people transport workers had been the first people true in Siberia when I was there the day laughed and said: "We're not going to on the scene. They drove all their buses before-there was this feeling that there defend the Kremlin. We're going to defend there and filled them up with diesel fuel, was going to be a protracted civil war. the White House [the Russian Parliament The idea was that if the tanks had But there was no preparation for it. Building]. We don't care about the Kremcharged, they would torch the whole lot. Nobody was Stockpiling tood. Nobody hin any more." In fact, a few of them were torched when was trying to get ammunition. it looked like there was going to be an As in [the battles of] Stalingrad and tanks tried to move, [they] would be surattack Leningrad, they said, "We'll fight with rounded by thousands of people-many What happened then was that they our hands. And we'll probably be fighting would be carrying the red, white, and blue scoured the entire city for miles for build- our parents." They said this because the Russian flags. So the soldiers all had to ing materials. They must have moved a age structure is such that people over 50 get out of their vehicles, take a flag, and are sort of sympathetic to the system, and cheer-and then they were allowed to They went about it very protessionally. everybody under 40 hates it. move. [Many of these people], who were ex-con- And these people were terrified. Rumors The government was unable to get any scripts, knew everything about tanks. were flying on the streets of Moscow. It's of the other army units involved. By They began to construct "hedgehogs,' " not even clear how many people were Thursday, the conscripts-who were which are big tangled arrays of reinforcing killed. I went to the funeral-which was unarmed—had joined the crowd. bars, steel scaffolding, all the things you all day Saturday [Aug. 24]-and they just Essentially, the whole city had stopped find on construction sites. Then in the brought in three coffins. But the funeral completely. (It's hard to know what to core of that, inside the hedgehogs, they was seen by everybody as a symbolic call it. Do you call it a ustrike?) People had massive pieces of machinery, big burial for the 15 million who died in the just went to demonstrations, there was no happen was that, if the tanks charged, Those people [killed near the barricades] area where the people were killed was full their catapillar tracks would get caught up were killed by the Red Army, But the Red of tlowers. By this time, the barricades in the pipes and the bars—and that would Army, as everybody knows, has a roman- were just gigantic-with rows of busestic, patriotic association, particularly for and they were piled with flowers.

SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1991 13 (continued from preceding page)

This jealous guarding of their economic conquests is not equated in workers' minds with socialism or communism. In their minds, if the Stalinist system is "socialism," they want no part of it. Nor will they tolerate any longer the hoggish CPSU officials who masqueraded as "socialists."

Soviet citizens scornfully told a reporter for The New York Times (Aug. 25, 1991) that they knew of local bureaucrats who preached in public against the privatization of the land while privately negotiating to buy sites for their vacation cottages for only token sums.

"There could be no better time to stop feeding the bellies of the party bigwigs, one woman sneered. "A well-fed person does not understand a hungry one."

We should not misread, either, the current lumping together of Lenin and Stalin. Stalin and the bureaucracy falsely claimed from the moment they began their assault on Leninism that they were Lenin's real political heirs. The entire capitalist world backed up Stalin 100 percent in this absolutely false claim.

It is a matter of historical fact that Lenin called for Stalin's removal as head of the Communist Party in his famous "Last Will and Testament." And it's also a well documented fact that when Stalin began his attack on Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the October Revolution, Stalin won the support of the entire capitalist world. He went on, after defeating Trotsky and the Leninist opposition, to his political counter-revolution, and murdered virtually everyone of Lenin's political collaborators, including Trotsky in exile in Mexico.

Parenthetically, one eyewitness to the events in recent days reported to Socialist Action (see box on this page) that Lenin is viewed with generalized respect. He says he saw not a single instance of defacement of Lenin's statues and posters throughout his 25-day stay, which included witnessing the mass mobilizations in Moscow against the coup.

Now, the same hated bureaucrats who had been enthusiastic supporters and participants in the Stalinist repression, mass imprisonments, and mass murders-culminating in two of the bloodiest purge trials in history-profess to have been innocent of all their crimes. And now, all these Stalinist rats are hypocritically cursing their own past and deserting the sinking ship of the Communist Party as fast as they can.

Parliamentary democracy

There was also a very important political component to the rising crisis that the coup conspirators must have believed was in their favor. They made the mistake of believing that the masses would prefer the old Stalinist "order" to the currently worsening economy.

Gorbachev's strategy for reintroducing capitalism is closely connected with his introduction of a kind of democracy known generically as "parliamentary democracy."

That's the kind of democracy that can exist in capitalist countries like our own, and it is far different from the democracy of the fledgling Soviet republic. In the first years following the Russian Revolution, every point of view of the workers was given the fullest opportunity for expression. The leadership of the workers' councils (called "soviets") was elected and subject to recall by simple majority vote.

Capitalist parliamentary democracy— while better than capitalist political dictatorship-nevertheless favors those who already are in control of the economic and social life of the country. In capitalist countries, the capitalists derive a decisive advantage because of their ownership of everything of real value, including the mass media of communication-the press, radio, and TV.

In the Stalinist bureaucratic system, parliamentary democracy gives a decisive advantage to the privileged bureaucracy and the vast middle-class layer of writers, artists, scientists, lawyers, technicians, and others who have long shared in the privileges reserved for the elite.

And with the attempted introduction of a market economy, there has also come a growing layer of entrepeneurs. These aspiring capitalists have sprouted mainly from the bureaucracy itself and from other privileged sectors of Soviet society. And it is from the latter sectors that the political allies of the Stalinist bureaucracy have emerged to dominate the parliamentary institutions.

It is an axiom of politics that parliamentary democracy works best when economic systems are in equilibrium, but is absolutely counterproductive in a crisis. The Soviet parliamentary system has been typically beset with quarreling politicians unable to agree on any plan of action for reaching their capitalist goals.

A brief glance at history will reveal that in such periods of crisis, when solutions are far from apparent or easily reachable, the ruling parliamentary representatives of power and privilege tend to fracture into contending factions. It is at such moments that the "strong men" of history tend to come forward in a desperate attempt to unite their cohorts in a drive toward a successful resolution of their crisis.

Why the coup failed This is the dynamic behind the attempted coup. It was an attempt to end the fractious parliamentary squabbling and empower a strong government to impose the preconditions for safe and profitable imperialist investment with whatever force was necessary-perestroika by bayonet, not glasnost.

However, those "democrats" who have come into the center of the new political power will not be able to smash the resistance of the workers and make their way to capitalism without new strongmen and political dictatorships. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who has already shown strong tendencies toward rule by decree, may be the next to try the road of the eight John Edmond, an American working in surrounding the attempted coup. Socialour October issue.

and drove them across the boulevards.

hundred thousand tons in a few hours!

transformers, you name it. What would slave camps.

be the end of them. coup-conspirators.

Why did the plotters hesitate when resolute action, from their point of view, was called for? Why did they not unleash a bloodbath, a vital necessity to scoundrels organizing such a campaign when some degree of mass opposition is inevitable? Coldly calculated bloodletting to intimidate and break the will of mass opposition is indispensable to any such operation.

It seems clear that they were paralyzed by the breadth of the opposition from Moscow to Leningrad to Siberia to the Baltic states. And not only was this junta confronted with hundreds of thousands in the streets, but by striking coal miners and other industrial workers in the heartland of the USSR.

In Estonia, some 400,000 workers participated in a two-hour general strike to protest the coup. And President Yeltsin, holed up in his Republican capital, issued a call for a political general strike throughout the country.

Moreover, the army was divided. An organized opposition has existed in the Soviet military for some time. It already played a role in defeating the attempted coup in Lithuania in January. Now, whole crews of armored cars and tanks defected to Yeltsin in front of the TV cameras.

Had the Bonapartist clique actually followed through with orders to shoot and kill, it was clear that a broad general strike and civil war were the most likely outcome.

As Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze prophesized at the time of his resignation from that post: "Dictatorship is coming. I state it with complete responsibility. No one knows of what kind this the noise of the construction work. There coup. dictatorship will be, and who will come what kind of dictator, what the regime will be like...." Clearly, the biggest outcome this life-long Stalinist feared was just this, a revolutionary rising by the worker victims of his bureaucratic dictatorship.

On Saturday, Aug. 24, Shevardnadze told a news conference in Moscow:

"Very soon people will begin judging the new democratic leaders by the way they cope in new conditions with the extremely serious problems facing the country: a slump in production, the supply of power, and so on. If these problems are not resolved, 1 am afraid that people may take to the streets."

As they poured into the streets, the Soviet masses wisely and instantly determined who their main enemy was. They successfully mobilized to oppose the coup-faction of the CPSU and halted it in its tracks.

We are still at the beginning of the political revolution, although it must be said that a new stage has been reached—the CPSU has been overthrown. Now there is a political vacuum in this land, but Soviet workers have not yet begun to take action in their own name. Tomorrow, we can be sure, they will mobilize again and again to rid their land of all totalitarianism.

But to be successful, the workers will need to take action in their own name and in their own class interests. For this, they will need to organize a revolutionary party of workers, which will study their own rich history. Thus armed, they will find their way to a program that can renew the historic struggle of Soviet workers for real socialism-and win! - N.W.

When the government cordoned off Red Everything was packed solid. When the question of showing up for work. The

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It is necessary to understand that the system of racial inequality is firmly in place today and that is why, for all kinds of reasons, the ruling class has got to dis. mantle the laws of apartheid so that the system of racial capitalism can continue, so that it can be perpetuated. 14 SOCIALIST ACTION • SEPTEMBER 1991 Following are major excerpts from a speech by Dr. Neville Alexander, chairperson of the Workers Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA) in South Africa.

The speech was given on May 2, 1991, at a Socialist Action forum titled "Transformation of South Africa into a New Society," held in the Church of the United Community in Boston. The transcript has been slightly edited to avoid repetition.

In South Africa today, a contradictory historical movement is taking place. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie-and the ruling class in general-has decided to de-racialize the racial capitalist system, what we've come to know as "apartheid,' properly speaking, in the modern period.

There are many reasons for this: economic, political, even military. But the fundamental point to understand is that they have decided to de-racialize the system. Of course, it's a result of pressure from the mass struggle, from the mass movement. Of course, it's a result of international isolation, of sanctions and all the rest of it.

But it's not because they have been defeated. It's not because the state in South Africa has been threatened with destruction. And this is a vital proviso to understand the real dynamics of change in South Atrica today.

There are people in South Africa on the so-called left who characterize the present period as one in which we are bringing to an end, we are consummating, what they call the national-democratic struggle. That struggle, in their own terms, should be consummated by way of the conquest of power by the popular masses under the leadership of working-class parties.

But if you look at the real situation in South Africa, you will find that, of course, this is not happening-far from it. The ruling class has decided to bring about certain reforms. So, on the one hand, you have that movement—it's an historic movement—away from formal, institutionalized racial inequality. That is one movement.

The other movement, and it is obviously interrelated, is one in which petit-bourgeois, middle-class layers of the oppressed people are being co-opted, are being brought into the corridors of power—in order to help the ruling class to police and to tax the rest of the working people.

And the problem for the middle-class militants is that while they are being co-opted, they have to give the impression that they are leading a struggle for liberty. They cannot allow the masses of the people to think that they are selling out.

"To adapt the system"

The ruling class came to the decision after the 1976 uprisings—in the words of P.W. Botha, the former president—"to adapt the system" in order to prevent it from dying. After Botha became president in 1978, they introduced various reforms at the constitutional level. All of them were simply tinkering with constitutional change with a view to getting hand-picked collaborators from amongst the oppressed in order to continue to work the system of white supremacy and white-minority domination.

But that failed, as the entire history of the '80s, in particular, demonstrates. That particular strategy failed hopelessly. The uprising of 1984-86 demonstrated more clearly than anything else that the broad liberation movement was not to be suppressed, was not to be defeated.

So, quite apart from P.W. Botha's own incapacity to govern as an individual (some of you might know he became very ill), the National Party had to decide to scrap apartheid, to scrap the nightmarish visions that people like Voerword and Dr. Iceland and other architects of apartheid had had in the 1940s.

And it was left to [President D.W.] De Klerk, one of the staple, typical conservatives in the National Party, to undertake the so-called transformation, to initiate the so-called New South Africa. One of the most conservative people had to do it because nobody else would have been able to bring along the rest of the National Party with them.

Now, what we have seen then on the part of the ruling party is a complete somersault. The day before the 2nd of February, 1990, everybody in the National Party who wasn't in the know was speaking the language of apartheid, was trapped in the discourse of racial superiority and racial inferiority, the discourse of Aaron Falkland. On the day after the 2nd of February, 1990, everybody had to learn to speak a new language.

And a lot of them are still stuttering and trying very hard to learn this new language—and failing, incidentally, but that's by the way.

The point I want to make then, simply, is that this somersault that we're seeing on the part of the ruling party is obviously incredible in the proper sense of the term. It's unbelievable. It doesn't mean that that somersault has really taken place.

ANC's call for negotiations In June 1988, the African National Congress (ANC) issued from Lusaka a document in which it for the first time raised the possibility publicly of participating in negotiations. And in that document-it's quite a large thing, very highly publicized inside South African and outside also there was a small clause hidden away where very few people noticed it.

And in that clause, they said that they had consulted very widely- amongst others with "the Chinese comrades" (I assume they meant the leadership of the Peoples' Republic of China.) And "the Chinese comrades" had advised them that perhaps it is necessary to make a distinction between the dismantling of apartheid and the ending of white rule.

Now, the ANC didn't say that they should accept that. But, it was deliberately included. People were being primed to accept the possibility of the ending of apartheid without the ending of white rule. And by the ending of apartheid, by the dismantling of apartheid, was meant simply the repeal of the laws put on the statute books by the National Party since 1948.

But we in the left movements of Africa have never defined apartheid as a set of laws put on the statute books by the ruling party, the National Party. For us, apartheid was simply the latest form of the system of racial capitalism.

For us, the dismantling of apartheid could never be constituted simply by the repeal of the laws which the National Party put on the statute books. In fact, if you take a sort of Aristotelian empty kind of logic, if all the laws of apartheid are repealed, you're not in a post-apartheid South Africa, you're in a pre-apartheid South Africa. You are, in fact, in a South Africa which was known as the South Africa of segregation.

What I want to say, simply, is that it has become very well understood today that if all the laws of apartheid are repealed, you do not bring an end to racial inequality. The capitalist mode of production operates in South Africa in such a way that social inequality, class inequality, is reproduced as racial inequality for reasons of the peculiar colonial history of South Africa.

It can only be stopped, as I've already indicated, through working-class revolution.

Struggle has only begun In recent times in South Africa, the metaphor has been popularized that the dismantling of apartheid is similar to the dismantling of a scaffolding which you use when you erect a house. You need the scaffolding while you're building the house. But the moment the house is standing on firm foundations, you have to dismantle the scaffolding because the scaffolding gets into the way.

It is necessary to understand that the system of racial inequality is firmly in place today and that is why, for all kinds of reasons, the ruling class has got to dismantle the laws of apartheid so that the system of racial capitalism can continue, so that it can be perpetuated.

I think once you understand that, you will also understand that whatever else happens in the next period, the ruling class generally (and the National Party in particular) is not going to allow the "management of change," as they call it, to slip our of their hands. They may be forced to, of course, but they are not going to allow it as of themselves.

And it is a pipe dream of the worst kind to believe that the white minority-more specifically, the capitalist classin South Africa is going to hand over power to a Black majority just because some people think they should do so, because it's morally correct to do so. It won't happen. It's as simple as that. I think once one understands that, we realize that the struggle has only begun.

And anybody living in the United States understands, I now know from my own personal experience, that racial oppression, racial inequality doesn't need laws after a certain measure of capitalist stability has been acquired. It doesn't need laws.

I think once that is clear to us, the problems of the liberation movement can be appreciated much more clearly. The South African government, the South African ruling class, has not been defeated. The repressive apparatus-the army, the police, the civil service, the judiciary—is completely intact. It is simply nonsense to suggest that they have been somehow even threatened with defeat.

Now, when one speaks like this, people look at you and sort of wonder whether you're really serious. And the answer is you are deadly serious. You are saying that our struggle is going to take a very long time still.

Mind you, we are not suggesting that there will not be certain superficial changes, which will allow the Black middle class more upward mobility, but will trap the rest-that is the vast majority of the Black people, the working class in the ghetto, in the homelands, in the compounds—continue to trap them there in a desperate sort of way, and that therefore the struggle has to continue. The class struggle has to continue.

What course of action?

We support and will mobilize support for those aspects of negotiations as a political strategy which will promote the interests of the working class.

For example, the whole question of the constituent assembly, if I may just take that one example, we obviously support that. We support it in the most consistent and radical way—more than any other group in the country in fact.

But the alternative to that is to continue the class struggle for fundamental social reforms such that in the balance of forces, the working class in South Africa is strengthened all the time.

Whether it is a slogan like, "One Family, One House," whether it is a national minimum wage, whatever! Fundamental social reforms. Thirty-five hours a week. Those are the things that are going to change the balance of forces in South Africa at this stage.

We're not suggesting at all that military aspects of the struggle should be ignored. Far from it. But we're also not saying that people should rush into suicidal actions simply because some of the young people think that power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Of course, power comes out of the barrel of a gun. It's how you get hold of the barrel of a gun that is important to understand.

(continued on next page)

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'We need to strengthen, in that context, the voice as well as the weight of the working class and of the interests of the working class within such a united front' ...South Africa (continued from preceding page)

Now what I am saying then, what I want to stress is that we mustn't fall victim to the illusion that some kind of freedom is around the corner in South Africa. Or that negotiations is another of the many magic formulas that we've had in the last few years in South Africa.

Whether it was sanctions, or general strikes, or "liberation before education," we've had so many magic formulas which everybody believed was going to bring instant liberation. But none of that, of course, has worked. The overall grand strategy of liberation has got to be continued.

International socialist I want to round off what I'm trying to suggest here this evening by looking at the international situation.

Reference has been made to the fact that WOSA, the Workers' Organization for Socialist Action, of which again it has been repeatedly said that I am the nominal chairperson (nominal because I've been away most of the time), that we represent the most consistent, most open socialist strand in South Africa. No reference at all has been made to the Communist Party, and that is not an oversight.

The Communist Party in South Africa is one of the most petit-bourgeois organizations in the country. It has abdicated its right to represent working-class politics by falling behind, falling into the wake of the African National Congress, a nationalist, populist organization (many of whose political actions we obviously support).

But the Communist Party, as a party that claims to represent workers' interests, has never acted as an independent force. And to that extent, I think WOSA does deserve special mention.

But we must not have any illusions. Since November 1989, the entire world situation has changed. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, as it was called, since the destruction of the bureaucratic centralist so-called socialist societies of Eastern Europe, the entire world situation has changed.

The contradictions of the capitalist system as a world system will inevitably bring about a turn of the tide. But, of course, we don't know how long it will last. It can last 10 years, it can last 20 years.

But it is vital to understand that we are in a trough as far as the international socialist movement is concerned.

[That is true] even though South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that has the social base, that has a peculiar history to make possible the not just the coming into being, but the strengthening of a militant socialist movement. ...

If you succeed in destroying the state machine in a particular country, it is capable of being smothered by imperialism in the way in which it has been busy smothering one revolutionary initiative after another in different parts of Latin America, different parts of the world.

And that is the problem that we face. We've got to realize that it is not enough for us to become strong in South Africa. But we have to help build an international socialist movement. Without that, there is no way that a successful socialist revolution is going to take place in South Africa.

Building the united front There are times when ... we have to criticize people and organizations which can smother us overnight if they so wish. Again, I haven't got the time to demonstrate how a movement like Inkatha shows the potential for multiple civil war in South Africa-Lebanonization, as we call it in South Africa.

To make two last points: One is that, in order to prevent the Lebanonization, we need to promote a united front on the question of the constituent assembly in South Africa.

We need to strengthen, in that context, the voice as well as the weight of the working class and of the interests of the working class within such a united front. And we are busy trying to do that with other organizations, including, of course, people in the ANC.

It isn't simply a question of principle; it's also a question ot strategic necessily for us to stress that outside [South Africa], the solidarity movement needs to help us build that united front on the issue of the constituent assembly.

Because if we fail in this, we will find ourselves in a position where very likely for decades we are going to be fighting, arms in hand against one another, with a divided working class that is obviously going to continue to be ruled in the most ruthless way by the powers that be at the moment.

We can work together And then finally, I want to come back to the United States. I want to say, very simply, that the one thing that has struck me over the past seven or eight months that I've been here is that hardly anything is being done about studying the question of racism—racial inequality, racial prejudice and all the other derivatives-which is the common experience of these two societies, the United States and South Africa.

Very little has been done about studying that in the sort of comparative context that will make sense in both of these countries. I'm trying to suggest that here is an issue on which radicals, militants in both countries can and should act together, take up that particular issue, make it into a central issue.

Because, although the demographic relationships are very different, the power relationships in these two societies are very similar. The white power structure in South Africa, despite being a minority demographically speaking-just on the question of land; I would quote other things: stock exchange, the share market, capital. ... You know, the white minority owns virtually the entire country.

The future of South Africa could look like the the present of this country 30 years after the civil rights movement thought it had succeeded in freeing the Black people. Now, it's for that reason I say that we can learn from one another, we can teach one another, we can act jointly in many, many ways.

explained that the socialist goal is strong Cubans' own experience with capitalism. He said the Cuban people don't blame their present difficulties on socialism but imperialism. Cuban healthcare and free

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›ny Mazzocchi says A SWORKERS COMM