From Republican Convention to Million Worker March
The struggle continues
By Fred Goldstein
New York
The following is based on a talk delivered at a Sept. 10
Workers World Party forum.
During the last week of August hundreds of thousands of
people took to the streets to demonstrate against the Repub
lican National Convention here. They did so in the face of an
unprecedented campaign of preemptive psychological warfare of
intimidation and threats by the entire capitalist
establishment. And we of Workers World Party pay special
tribute to the many thousands who braved all the threats and
went beyond the pre-convention demonstration on Aug. 29, and
engaged in various types of resistance and civil disobedience
during the RNC itself.
Two thousand people, mostly young, of all political
persuasions, were arrested. They may not have come to confront
the cops. But the cops confronted them and they refused to
leave the streets. We salute them and stand in solidarity with
their struggle, including our own comrades and friends who were
arrested.
The establishment announced its repressive campaign months
in advance in order to forestall these protests. One way to
understand the ferocity and unity with which the ruling class
prepared and carried out this mass repression is to see it in
the context of the deepening quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan
and the damage by the resistance there to the reputation of
U.S. imperialism as the all-powerful imperialist colossus.
While the establishment wanted to stop a Seattle-type
development in New York City, the more haunting historical
precedent for them was the Chicago Democratic Convention of
1968. That is what they were thinking about.
Thousands and thousands of youth came to Chicago in 1968
because of their hatred of the Vietnam War and to make their
voices heard because they thought that they could end the war
by promoting Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic presidential
candidate. They were met by a wall of police and a rebellion
was ignited. All the capitalist media was there, as they are at
all the conventions, and the youth chanted: "The whole world is
watching."
And, indeed, the whole world was watching, as U.S.
imperialism was not only losing the war in Vietnam, but was
losing control over the youth and the anti-war struggle.
In the months before the 2004 Repub lican National
Convention it became clear that Washington and the Pentagon
were becoming bogged down in another imperialist
quagmire--Iraq. And the Bush administration was reviled, not
only for the occupation, but for its overall reactionary
policy.
Washington was losing control of the cities in Iraq and it
was desperately determined to maintain control over the streets
of New York City during the RNC. Should the hated Bush trigger
a Chicago-type rebellion it would be a signal of instability at
home for the whole world to see, just like in 1968. Of course
that was a different period, but nevertheless, the stakes for
the ruling class were the same.
Repression: The perfect storm
The federal government, the state government and the New
York City government all united in an effort allied with Wall
Street to break up any momentum toward such a rebellion early
on.
To understand the situation, you have to know the mayor of
New York. Michael Bloomberg has $4 billion dollars and he made
it by supplying financial information to Wall Street and the
ruling class about every single capitalist financial trading
process that takes place in every market across the globe. He's
on the most intimate terms with the highest echelons of the
ruling class.
And New York City Police Com mis sioner Ray Kelly is not
just an ordinary cop. He was the head of global security for
Bear Stearns, one of the largest brokerage houses.
And, of course, Bush himself is a creature of the
billionaires.
It was a perfect merger, with perfect unity of purpose.
There was not one voice of dissent among the capitalist class
or any of its principle organs. They were all for crushing any
resistance before it started and once it got started they
supported the repression--including unprovoked mass arrests,
throwing nets around people, setting up mass detentions
facilities, helicopter surveillance and the massive police
assault forces on the streets.
You might say that this was a classical demonstration of
capitalist democracy. Capitalist democracy, as Marxists know,
and as Lenin pointed out many times, is accompanied by
ferocious repression. The Black community in this country knows
this; the Latino, Asian, Native and Middle Eastern communities
know this.
The two big capitalist parties are going to hold the
elections on Nov. 2. They are going to tout their "democracy"
at work. Meanwhile they have just finished crushing in a most
undemocratic way the right of the people to come out on the
streets to protest militantly against a brutal imperialist war
and the oppression of the people at home. That's capitalist
democracy--it's "democratic" as long as you stay within the
framework of what the ruling class considers its vital
interests.
The ruling class decided that under conditions of an
imperialist occupation in crisis, declining economic conditions
of the people, a growing hatred of the administration,
protection of their vaunted president--chief executive of the
boss class--and the need to show stability at home, it was in
their vital interests to maintain iron control of the streets
of New York City. So democracy went out the window and police
repression moved to front and center stage--including
preventive detention, arbitrary round-ups, violation of
privacy, etc.
So when Bush or Kerry say that "We're waging war for
democracy" let's remind everyone about this.
A new movement emerges
This strengthening of the capitalist state in New York City
was part of the general gearing up of the ruling class for
future battles. They are afraid of New York City because it is
a bastion of the labor movement, with annual, huge Labor Day
marches. It is the political capital of the Black community; it
has two million people who come out to Caribbean Day, massive
Puerto Rican Day parades, a huge Dominican community. The
city's population is a majority people of color.
The threats of repression during the RNC were not just
against demonstrators but to the city as a whole and to all the
urban centers with vast concentrations of workers and oppressed
peoples--Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Pitts burgh,
Birmingham and so on.
But their repressive measures and their tactics of
intimidation can and will be pushed back once the awakening
struggles of the workers, youth and the movement against the
war begin to merge with the class struggle.
And it is just such a prospect which is before us with the
emergence of the movement for the Million Worker March being
organized for Oct. 17. There is a beautiful poster, which is
not only beautiful because of its striking and colorful
appearance, but because it is a declaration of class
independence of the labor movement. It makes demands against
the war, against racism, for education instead of
incarceration, as well as for wages, pensions, health care, and
so on. It declares its intention to give the rich a wake-up
call.
And it does not appeal to John Kerry or make vague
references to "opposing the Bush agenda" which has become the
subterfuge for social democrats who want to rally the movement
behind the Demo crats. Instead it proclaims that they, as labor
unionists, as workers, are "organizing in our own name."
As anyone can see this is a highly progressive step forward
and we would support such a demonstration under any
circumstances. But it also helps to see what is at stake in
this mobilization if we try to put the Million Worker March
into the historical perspective of the struggle in the labor
movement.
'Which side are you on?'
For many decades the heavy hand of business unionism,
emanating from the top leadership of organized labor, has had a
regressive and reactionary effect on the unions and, as a
result, on the struggle of the working class as a whole.
The struggle within the labor movement as it developed with
the accelerated development of capitalism after the Civil War
in the United States was over which political course labor
should take.
The first was the conservative, confining trade union
philosophy, based on two important pillars.
One: that labor should limit its political activity to
rewarding its "friends" in the capitalist political
establishment at election time. That was to be the extent of
the political organizing of the labor movement.
And two, that the unions should stick to fighting for wages,
benefits and working conditions and leave all the social
questions to the ruling class.
As against this position, the position of communists,
socialists and all other class-conscious unionists was for the
class independence of the labor movement, politically. That the
workers should organize as a class and have their own political
program and representatives.
Eugene Debs, who ran for president on the Socialist Party
ticket twice, once while in jail, and who denounced WWI as a
war between the ruling classes in which the bodies of the
working classes were used as fodder, exemplified this approach
(although even such a towering figure as Debs failed to grasp
the vital importance of the struggle against racism).
The working class must assert itself as an independent
force, as a class. And certainly the labor movement has the
right and the responsibility to declare its political
independence, in whatever form that takes, for the purposes of
waging the class struggle. This independence should allow the
labor movement to intervene in all political, social and
economic matters that affect--not only the union movement--but
the working class and the oppressed as a whole, whether on
matters of social security, health care, education or
imperialist war.
Workers organized in unions have a right to take up these
vital questions. When they do this they reject being a mere
economic category in capitalist society--"labor." Their
interests are affected by everything that goes on inside and
outside the workplace--from the halls of Congress and the White
House to city hall. They begin to see themselves as the
fundamental economic class, based on its role as producer of
all wealth, capable of leading society out of the capitalist
morass.
Above all the labor movement must fight on behalf of the
communities and the working class as a whole outside the labor
movement and for the most downtrodden stratum who so
desperately need so many social services and who are harshly
deprived day in and day out.
First step is decisive
Where does the Million Worker March stand from the
standpoint of labor history? The Million Worker March, when
considered in light of the historic struggle over the mission
and role of the labor movement in U.S. capitalist society, is
taking a bold and daring initiative in trying to break through
decades and decades of confining, conservatizing, class
collaborationist, business trade unionism.
The struggle to tame the labor movement--after its great
breakthrough in the 1930s and the organizing in the mass
production industries, gaining the right to organize and many
other rights for the workers and the poor as a whole, including
pensions, welfare, etc.--began before and during World War II
and reached its peak during the McCarthy witch-hunt period.
Communists, socialists and progressive, militant
class-conscious workers and labor unionists were the organizing
engines behind the progress of the working class. And as long
as they were rooted in the unions, the possibility--the
potential--of class solidarity, socially conscious unionism,
class struggle and political independence remained a threat to
the ruling class.
The post World War II witch-hunt and the promotion of
conservative union leaders loyal to U.S. imperialism and
cooperative in ceding to the capitalist political establishment
unchallenged political domination, was simultaneously directed
against the Soviet Union, the entire socialist camp, and the
labor movement in the U.S.
Communists and progressives were rooted out of union after
union.
And later on during the 1960s, when as an expression of the
rise of the Black liberation struggle in the U.S. militant
African American organizers took the initiative in the unions
to organize--especially in the auto industry--they were rooted
out with the collaboration of the labor leadership.
So the Million Worker March movement, which is catching on
and getting support within increasingly broader sections of the
labor, at least in word and hope fully in deed, is the first
serious attempt in decades from inside the labor movement to
cast off the political shackles of traditional, conservative
"business unionism" and chart a course of independence.
It has been made possible by the changed character of the
working class under the impact of the scientific-technological
revolution brought about by capitalism. The working class is
more Black, more Latin@, more Asian and incorporates more
millions of immigrant workers and more women. The working class
is lower-paid, worked harder, and is more and more under
pressure from capital.
It is no accident that a number of crucial leaders at the
core of the movement for the Million Worker March are veterans
of the Black liberation struggle of the 1960s. They have
emerged to continue their struggle for justice within the
framework of the labor union movement, and they have also
brought the precious social consciousness of the earlier
movement with them.
And today the condition of the working class has so declined
and been so transformed that the MWM call to unionists to
broaden their political, social and economic horizons by
mobilizing on a class-wide basis, by mobilizing against the
war, by calling on youth, students, community activists and all
who are harmed by the system to join them in motion--this call
is getting a wide response.
For decades radicals have been calling for the union
movement to adopt a more progressive posture in politics and in
all social questions, not just on paper but in action. Now a
movement of genuine working-class leaders has arisen from
inside the labor movement.
It is said that even a 10,000-mile journey begins with a
single step. It is important to see the road that the Million
Worker March is setting out upon. They are taking a vital first
step on the road to class independence. This effort has enemies
on all sides and in all quarters of the ruling class, which
will do whatever it can to crush this movement, derail it,
coopt it if necessary or marginalize it.
The success of this movement is important to the future of
the struggle in the U.S. These leaders have taken up the
challenge and our Party, and all progressives and
revolutionaries, must lend their unstinting support to this
spark of resistance and help fan the flames of struggle.
Reprinted from the Sept. 23, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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