Bulletin for the Emancipation of Labor: 4
Published by Pro-Labor Citizens, In Defense of the Rights of Workers
Vote for a Socialist Candidate for President in November!
Write In "McReynolds/Hollis"
Every four years, the rulers, the property owners, who exploit the rest of
us, ask us to take just a few minutes to ratify their control of the society
in which we live and work. We are urged to vote for the multimillionaire who
represents the Radical Religious Right, organized in the Republican Party, or
for the multimillionaire who advocates the moderate Republicanism of the
Democrats (e.g., "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Defense of Marriage Act, ending
welfare as an entitlement, etc.). This year, since neither candidate inspires
confidence among reasonable people, "third parties" have been added: the
Greens have nominated a multimillionaire (admitted worth: $3,900,000) who is
an avowed opponent of socialism and an enemy of union organizing among "his
own" employees. For the most misanthropic in the population, there is Pat
Buchanan, a fourth plutocrat seeking election. Interestingly, Nader and
Buchanan have identical, antipathetic views on Mexico.
Now it should be clear from the descriptions above that none of these
candidates merits the support of working people. Neither of the two
political-scion rich kids, Bush and Gore, and neither of the two
America-Firsters, Nader and Buchanan, offers a livable future for workers in
the U.S. Fact is, there is no future for us without a socialist
transformation of this society, and there is no future for socialism, unless
socialists cease to submerge their politics instead of fighting for them.
There is one candidate, a good and decent man, with a decades-long record of
activism in the cause of peace and equality, running as a socialist, who has
used his campaign to try to put the question of socialism on the American
political agenda. David McReynolds, the candidate of the Socialist Party,
deserves the support of the working class and our allies, because the
platform on which he runs calls for an end to the exploitation faced by
working people and demands equality for the specially oppressed, among them,
gay people, people of color, the foreign-born, and women.
The McReynolds campaign inspires confidence, first, because the Socialist
Party insists that democracy and socialism are inseparable, and secondly,
because of the transparently democratic and healthy internal life of that
party.
More information about the McReynolds campaign is available at
votesocialist.com. In Massachusetts, voters can choose the Socialist Party
candidate by writing "McReynolds/Hollis" in the write-in portion of the
ballot. Voters in other states should consult the web page above to find out
how to vote for David McReynolds.
Gus Hall, 1910 - 2000
A Loyal Friend of the Democrats Has Died
It is rare that The New York Times memorializes a leader in the workers' movement on its editorial page, as it did for Gus Hall, who led the Communist Party (CP) for decades and died at 90 in Manhattan on October 13. To discover the reason for ruling-class affection for Hall, one must review his long career and politics in the service of Stalinism. "Stalinism" refers to the policies of the Communist parties after about 1924, when these parties, at the behest of J.V. Stalin, began to subordinate class struggle in their respective countries to the needs of the bureaucracy that ruled the USSR. In time, this betrayal was accomplished by persuading working people to support ruling-class politicians. In the United States this meant that the CP sought to lead popular movements into the Democratic Party, as well as backing Democratic candidates in presidential elections from 1936 on. Initially, CP suppport for Democratic office-seekers was nearly surreptitious, but by 1944 the CP was willing to campagin openly for the Democrats, a policy that continues to the present day.
The son of a Minnesota miner, Gus Hall followed his father into the CP in 1927. In the thirties, Hall worked as a militant union organizer in the midwest, where he was arrested twice during hard-fought strikes. By the late thirties, Hall had become a staffer in the CP, a party already heavy with bureaucracy. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, Hall was named to the Party's leadership body in 1946. Unjustly targeted by the Federal government, he served six years in Leavenworth and was released in 1957. In 1959 the CP chose Hall as its leader.
By the end of the fifties the Federal government had imposed severe restrictions on the right of Americans to dissent from conventional pro-capitalist views. CP members could not legally obtain passports or hold government jobs; they faced mob violence and prosecution merely because of their political convictions. Gus Hall was even denied a New York drivers' license.
In spite of this bipartisan attack on civil liberties, the CP persisted in supporting the Democrats, ignoring the fact that the Cold War against the Soviet Union and the workers' movement had been launched by Democrat Harry Truman.
Two phrases epitomize Hall's politics: "a broad people's movement" and "independent politics inside the Democratic Party." The former expression describes the policy that any popular movement should ultimately be brought under the control of Democratic Party politicians, while the latter phrase asserts the utterly false and misleading claim that anti-capitalist politics are possible inside a bourgeois party, a party like the Democrats or the Greens, whose actions are dedicated to the defense of capitalist rule.
Led by Hall, the CP tirelessly propagated the falsehood that the interests of workers and other oppressed people could be advanced simply by keeping the Democrats in power, and so it is no surprise that the Times expressed the gratitude of the U.S. rulers to Hall. After all, he spent decades hustling popular struggles into the swamp of bourgeois politics.
Email: royt@mailcity.com
