The following is taken from a speech by Workers World Party Chairperson Sam Marcy on Nov. 7 analyzing the U.S. presidential election.Comrades and friends,
I'm happy to address you today on the 75th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It is only fitting that we discuss the character of the capitalist government's new administration in the light of Marxist theory, particularly as it relates to bourgeois parliamentarism.
Where is the imperialist system dragging us? What is the meaning of the world capitalist crisis in relationship to the new administration of Bill Clinton?
First, notice this small thing: After the election, which seemed to be a bitter contest in which the candidates tried to defame one another in every way possible, Bush graciously sent a congratulatory note to Clinton and asked the people to support him.
Clinton graciously responded and thanked him, saying he hoped all the people who opposed him would now support him.
Don't think for a minute this is just an act of fair play and good sportsmanship. They sent these congratulatory notes not because they don't hate each other's guts--they do--or because the antagonisms between them have lessened, but because it is imperative that the ruling class of the United States show they have class solidarity in the face of worldwide hatred of imperialism and capitalism.
No matter how fractured they may be within, no matter how torn asunder by private property interests, they still have to show unity in their class in order to rally the mass of the people to support the forthcoming program of the Clinton administration.
Workers want Clinton to solve crisis
This election comes in the middle of an ever-deepening capitalist crisis. It isn't going away.
Millions of workers are waiting to see what Clinton will do. There's a wave of euphoria and good feeling for him, of letting him try to turn the country around, as he promised.
The ruling class is telling the workers to have patience. But look at some of the most powerful corporations, like General Motors. They're not waiting for Clinton to do something. They're going right ahead with a five-year plan to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers, to if need be decentralize the vast apparatus of one of the most powerful industrial corporations in the world.
They're not going to wait and see what Clinton does. They're restructuring. Nothing is new as far as they're concerned. If there's something new, they'll tell it to Clinton. They're not waiting for him to tell them.
Wouldn't it be something if six months ago a big corporation had said, we're waiting to make our plans, we're not going to lay off anybody, we'll wait and see if the new president has a big plan to get the country moving again?
Or take the most advanced and modern technological corporation, IBM. Have you heard them say, we're going to wait for Clinton? They are restructuring their vast network of plants throughout the whole world, and they're not waiting for Clinton.
Let's see how it is in light industry, like Sears & Roebuck or R.H. Macy. Their restructuring plans are going right ahead, and they're not affected in the least by the new administration. Of course, the government will help them with tax breaks and all sorts of incentives to make them more competitive on the world market.
These few examples from the Fortune 500 also affect what thousands of smaller corporations do. R.H. Macy alone has thousands of little creditors and suppliers from whom they buy things. If Macy's goes down, the small businesses sink even faster. It's the same with Sears and General Motors. Their reorganizations will go on, always on a downward spiral, not on an upward, expanding track.
Pratt & Whitney is another. While they may be crying in their soup that they're losing military contracts, they show no inclination to convert to making houses for the homeless, or refrigerators, washers and so on. That's fine, they say, but we can't make them, and we're not about to dismantle our military machine in the interest of marginal profits.
How capitalist gov't handled the Depression
The last capitalist crisis that almost cracked up the system began in 1929 and lasted for several years. That period is instructive to us now. It's very important to know what happened during that recession, how the capitalist government handled it at the time, how the workers looked at it, and what finally happened to all the plans of that period.
Clinton, you know, is posing as a younger version of Franklin Roosevelt with a little bit of Kennedy--a young, audacious man not bound by old traditions, who will try a lot of new things to change the situation.
By 1932, there were between 16 and 20 million unemployed. Everyone agrees it was devastating.
There was a big difference between then and now. Then, there was no unemployment insurance, no health care, no Social Security. There was only charity and county home relief, which was very meager. There were millions of unemployed, but in the first few years, rather than mass revolts, there was mass demoralization.
The capitalists blamed the individual worker for not having a job. Did Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was governor of New York, think that way? Of course he did, as did the president, Herbert Hoover. Hoover said, we've got to cut the deficit. How many times have we heard that! They never say cut the worker's deficit, the bills the worker has to pay. It's just the government debt that has to be cut--because it's their government, not ours.
Roosevelt's reforms
When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he did begin to change things very rapidly. For that reason, he was regarded as an almost heroic figure. When he came in, the banking system was about to collapse completely. He closed the banks for a few days--it was called a bank "holiday"--and shored them up. That was important. Everything was about to go under, not just industry but the banks too, and substantial changes had to be made quickly. He saved the system.
But the changes weren't just symbolic. What most workers remember is that their pay was raised almost immediately, from maybe $10 per week to $15. A minimum wage was established. The basis was laid for unemployment insurance, Social Security and all that.
He introduced revolutionary measures to help the ruling class get out of its crisis. But most of them still hated him for it.
There was a fear that if they didn't make real changes, the whole system might be overturned and go communist, as was about to happen in quite a few countries at that time. And it shouldn't be forgotten that the Soviet Union was strong in that period.
The substantial gains made by the workers during the Roosevelt years wouldn't have happened, however, except for another important development: the enactment of a law that protected the right of the workers to organize and join unions. It had a lot of meaning. I was one of the workers who got fired for union activity at that time, and I didn't believe the capitalist government would really intervene to reinstate me. But lo and behold, after I applied to the National Labor Relations Board, they quickly came into the plant and reinstated me and four others. It was a surprise!
It was a particular period in U.S. history. The Roosevelt administration was riding high with the support of the workers, the farmers, and a small group of the middle class. But it didn't last. By 1937 a new capitalist recession was raging, and it began to discredit the Roosevelt administration. However, the workers were still very loyal to Roosevelt and would be for a long, long time.
What Clinton can't do
Now let's look at the Clinton administration. Why can't Clinton do what Roosevelt did?
When Roosevelt came in, the U.S. capitalist military machine was very small. While bigger than its imperialist rivals, it was nothing like what we have today. The U.S. government had no commitments to the rest of the world comparable to NATO today, or its relations with the European Community and the Asian economic bloc.
Today the U.S. government has financial, economic and military commitments to something like 96 countries across the globe, not counting the new counter-revolutionary government in the USSR. That means putting out more and more money to maintain its monopoly position in international affairs.
Last March 8, the New York Times leaked a Pentagon document that said the U.S. should discourage "advanced industrial nations ... from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." This is not the language of diplomacy, but brutal, street language. Don't you dare even think of beating us in any field. We are supreme throughout the world.
And because of that, the U.S. is burdened with a debt of $4 trillion.
What can the Clinton administration do under these circumstances? He can't try what the Roosevelt administration did. It used the historic position that U.S. capitalism was in after the first world war, when it came out a creditor nation while everyone else owed money.
U.S. in debt to world
Today the U.S. is indebted to the whole world. When they say the Treasury is auctioning bonds, that means the government is giving out IOU's. Any country that has any money buys these bonds, and thereby the U.S. becomes indebted to them.
When we hear the glittering promises being made about changing the economic situation, we must ask how it will be changed concretely? Tell us in A-B-C language. Will Social Security be raised? Or will it be undermined in some way?
How will jobs be created? Roosevelt tried several ways. He started with big agricultural plans, like the Boulder Dam. Money was invested in highways, railroads, and the ocean front. It cost a lot, and the capitalist class was concerned about it because they always think the U.S. Treasury belongs to them. Remember, the capitalist government is nothing but the executive committee of the ruling class.
The Roosevelt administration did something for which the capitalist class never forgave it. That was the famous Wagner Act protecting the workers' right to organize. The workers utilized the law and organized millions, raising their standard of living.
Before the Roosevelt administration, very few workers were organized into unions. They were mostly in garment and textiles and coal mining. There was no organization in the big industries like auto, steel, aluminum, electric and chemicals.
What Roosevelt did, if we want to give him the credit, was encourage the type of legislation that helped the workers fight and organize, and this revolutionary upsurge of the workers raised the standard of living. That's how the capitalist recession was modified to some extent.
Decline of industry today
What's altogether different today? I pointed this out in the book "High Tech and Low Pay." Today employment in the major industries--steel, auto, etc.--is in a phenomenal decline. If we are to believe Clinton, heavy industry in the U.S. accounts for only 16 percent of the work force while in Germany it's 32 percent and in Japan 28 percent.
How does this affect the workers? I'll give you an example. The LTV corporation is trying to finagle the steelworkers out of their pension rights. They union has gone from one court to another, and it's still being held up. This is the mighty United Steelworkers of America. Thirty years ago, the workers would have marched into the plant and told the boss, pay the pension now or else!
What highway robbery, to take the workers' pensions. What could be more sacred? The workers' have the right to take over the plant, get ahold of the manager. But they don't think that way any more.
The union movement covers only about 14 percent of the work force. That's something to think about.
The ruling class is organized. It's got not only the government but hundreds of trade associations. Even the small capitalists have some sort of organization. Every street, the merchants have an association that's active.
But the mass of the workers, especially the poorest, are unorganized. Our Party and in particular the National Committee will discuss what to do about that.
If the Clinton administration wanted to follow the Roosevelt administration and be the good guy and get in bad with the capitalist class, it could strengthen the National Labor Relations law. Once it had big, sharp teeth but today it hasn't got even false teeth. If you file a complaint with the NLRB, be prepared for a six-month vacation before you hear from them.
What Clinton could do
Since Clinton has a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, they could introduce a bill saying that employees of every establishment must belong to a union without the company being able to stop it. That would give some 50 million workers the right to do something about their jobs. That's what the NLRB did in heavy industry.
The political process in all capitalist countries divides politics from economics. Most workers don't know who their representatives are, not out of ignorance but because it has nothing to do with their livelihood.
The thinking that bourgeois elections alone can change the situation is erroneous. It can happen only as a result of struggle. We have to launch a new struggle and develop an instrument in the hands of the workers.
The multinational character of the U.S. population, with so many Black, Latin, Asian, and Native people, with many lesbians and gays, needs an all-encompassing organization like the People's Assembly. And the People's Assembly needs an organization like Workers World Party to explain the workings of capitalist monopoly and its congenital tendency to shove the burden of capitalism on the backs of the poorest at home and abroad.
We need to explain that what we are facing with the Clinton administration is demagogy. But the workers will believe it for a while. In the Clinton administration they are thinking that the problems in the U.S. should be solved at the expense of Europe, Asia and Latin America. When Clinton says he wants to create jobs, he means take them away from the Europeans, from the Japanese, from the Asians. When they talk about the global economy, they want to make it an appendage to the decaying monopoly capitalism of the U.S. Which is impossible.
We have to have patience with the workers. At the beginning they are taken in by this demagogy and promises. We must show the basic issues, what are the differences between the Roosevelt administration and the present.
The Truman administration
After Roosevelt died in 1945 and the administration of Harry S. Truman took over, the ruling class tried in every way to reverse the social gains that had been made. Truman is hated worldwide for good reasons, because he undertook the policy of world domination, bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and introduced the cold war.
But in order to get reelected, Truman had to do several things which are of interest to us now. First, he had to carry on Roosevelt's progressive domestic reforms, despite ruling class resistance. At least on paper, the Truman administration was for full employment. That boggles our mind today, because nobody speaks in terms of guaranteed full employment any more. I don't hear Clinton say it, or any of his lieutenants. But the Full Employment Act was passed then, and is still on the books, and says that the government must work to make full employment a reality.
Truman vetoed the repressive, anti-labor Taft-Hartley law, but because of the hysteria in the capitalist press, Congress overrode his veto. His administration was also for a Civil Rights Act.
The ruling class then engineered a split in the Democratic Party in the South. They organized the breakaway of the Dixiecrats to bolster racism.
In 1948, every poll and most of the politicians predicted Truman would be defeated by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. The capitalist press was so much against him and so certain he would lose the election that the Chicago Tribune proclaimed Dewey the winner in a huge front-page headline. However, Truman did get reelected, but was driven out later. You can't have a second Roosevelt in a period of monopoly capitalism, even a watered-down version.
We need to organize in a new way. We have to have patience with the workers who are enthusiastic with the new administration, but also remember that there are millions of others not taken in by it, especially the unemployed, who understand that this is a political trick and will not be deceived. We must address ourselves to them.
We need to build our own movement, a revolutionary vanguard of the working class that can tell the truth. Here on the 75th anniversary of the October Revolution, let's remember that Lenin's newspaper was called by one word: pravda--truth. We need a strong, working class paper like Workers World, and we need a Party to spread out throughout the length and breadth of this land to organize for the revolutionary offensive that will surely come.
[In a discussion period that followed, Marcy answered several questions.]
- On U.S. relations with Cuba, Clinton's pronouncements don't differ from the position of the Bush administration, and we must redouble our efforts to defend Cuba. Our Party should be congratulated for participating in the Friendshipment caravan.
- Comparing today to the 1930s, another banking crisis is in the making, but Clinton can't bail the commercial banks out in the same way the Roosevelt administration did. Today there's a $4 trillion debt and a bailout will increase inflation.
- It's not out of the question that Clinton could try a version of Rooseveltian reforms, which we would support, like extending unemployment insurance or raising the minimum wage. He could get support for it from a section of the ruling class concerned with light industry--food, clothing, the things people buy when they have some money. But the restructuring narrows the opportunities for reform and presents a problem at home and internationally. Only proletarian internationalism can help.
- There's an embryonic development of dual power in the USSR between those in the Congress of People's Deputies who defend the socialist structures and the counter-revolutionary Yeltsin governing group. While Yeltsin may be exaggerating the strength of the opposition in order to get more support from the imperialists, nevertheless this split represents substantial class forces on opposing sides.