First Published: People’s Tribune, Vol. 3, No. 22, October 15, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
November 2nd is election day. Another presidential election in which less than 50% of the elegible voters will vote. And those voters who do vote are in a situation of having to chose between two candidates of the ruling class. Is this because the workers of the US do not care about who governs the country? .Quite the contrary! It is precisely because workers do care about who is in control that they feel there is no real choice between the Democratic Presidential candidate Carter, arid the Republican candidate Ford.
Although the two candidates differ in their approach to the issues in and outside of the nation, neither Carter or Ford, Democrat or Republican, take a stand on the side of the USNA worker. And it could not be otherwise! As we well know, both the candidates represent the interests of big business, of the capitalists.
Because of this, neither of the candidates can take a stand or resolve the problems of unemployment, crime, pollution, corruption, or the so-called “lack of moral leadership” in the country. After a few insignificant months of economic recovery which were really months of intensified productivity and not more jobs, the economy is again preparing to fall into gigantic crisis.
What are you faced with in this period? On the one hand there is Ford–who pardoned Nixon; whose Secretary of Agriculture Butz was let go with “great regret” after having repeatedly made chauvinist and degrading remarks until it got to the point that he had to be fired in an election year; and whose economic policies maintained unemployment at 8%. And there is Carter who is a millionaire with sharecroppers, on his farm, who believes in “ethically pure neighborhoods” and who cannot define his position on income taxes for the working class.
Taking all these things into account, how should workers and progressives participate in the November elections? These elections must be a chance to register a pro-working class, anti-capitalist vote. It is not enough to refuse to vote or to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Workers in the USNA must start acting and operating as a political force in the country if they are to become one. You’re the majority and there is no reason for you not to start making your power and position in society felt.
Only the Communists are involved in organizing the working class as a politically independent force.
In New York, Art Goldberg, member of the Communist Labor Party is running for state senator in the 23rd district; in Detroit, Michigan, General Baker also a member of the CLP is running for state representative in the 9th district, and another member of the Communist Labor Party, Michael C. Miller, is running for the Board of Education in San Francisco, Calif.
There is only one choice for the workers in this election and that is to Vote Communist on November 2nd. This is the only meaningful vote you can cast.
Below are some excerpts from interviews with Art Goldberg, General Baker and Mike Miller respectively. These express the Communist Labor Party’s positions on the many issues facing the workers and how we should organize to resolve them.
What will socialism mean to the various classes in society?
Socialism will mean real freedom. It means a job, because without a job there is no food, shelter and clothing, and without food, shelter and clothing there is no life. It means getting up in the morning and knowing the battery is going to be in your car so you can drive to work. It means coming home at night and knowing your television is going to be there. Because once people are capable of living without stealing from their neighbors, stealing will stop. It means living in a friendly town where national hatred has ended and people are no longer afraid of one another because of the color of their skin or the language they speak.
Socialism means that the wealth of society is spent on everyone. All socialist countries today have free medical care and very inexpensive food and clothing. For instance in the Soviet Union, rent is only 3% of the workers’ income and inflation hasn’t risen since 1928. In fact, prices have gone down. After all, what is life about? Everyone wants to raise their kids, save some money, and not have to worry about their wife or husband getting mugged. They want something to eat; to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. But capitalism makes these little problems of life into major problems. Socialism has the goal of solving these problems and thus allowing mankind to develop. Education is free and available to all. Advanced technical skills are used to benefit all. Culture is developed. In the Soviet Union every factory has a cultural complex attached to it. Within this complex exists theaters, sports arenas, movie houses and reading rooms. Socialism not only insures that people eat, but develops their intellectual and cultural aptitudes. In a nutshell socialism is not based on exploitation, but on the cooperation of the people in the society for the betterment of all.
How is the Communist Labor Party different from the Democratic and Republican parties?
The Communist Labor Party is different from the Democratic and Republican parties in both form and content. The major difference is the class content of these parties. The twin parties of reaction are both capitalist parties, they serve the interest of the ruling class in this society, big business–that segment of society that lives off the labor of the masses of working people in this society.
On the other hand, the Communist Labor Party openly avows it is a party of the proletariat, it has no other basis of existence but to clarify, aid and develop the class struggle of the working people, the struggle for socialism, the struggle for political power the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist Labor Party’s program summed up in our slogan, Jobs, Peace and Equality, represents the urgent needs of the working class. Our program says, Jobs at the expense of the military budget. Don’t use tax dollars to launch another war of aggression or to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations.
On the other hand the Republican Party openly avows that it is the party of big business and is generally known as that, even to working people. It’s the party of Nixon and the Watergate scandals; it’s the party that brought us the wage-price freeze of recent times, it’s the party under which the working class suffers so much at the heels of the Rockefeller’s and the energy industry. Historically it is the party of recession and the cutback of social welfare programs so badly needed by the workers.
The Democratic Party is known to the working class as the “party of labor.” It generally has the backing of major labor unions and other working class organizations in this country. Historically however the Democratic Party is the party of war. It was under Democratic administrations that the Korean and Vietnam wars were launched. The aggression in the Congo, Cuba, and Santo Domingo–it was under the Democratic Party leadership, from the executive branch fundamentally, that these wars of aggression were launched against working and oppressed people around the world, especially the colonial countries.
Not only is the Communist Labor Party different from the bourgeois parties in content, in terms of the interest we represent, but there is also a major difference in form.
The Communist Labor Party is a militant, fighting party of the proletariat. Therefore, it differs fundamentally from the parties of big business. The Democratic and Republican parties are parliamentary groupings. They are not designed nor do they want to draw working people into active political life. Instead, they serve a handful of legislators and political hacks in each party. An example of this is that once a vote is taken on this bill or that, in the legislature, the struggle is ended. Neither of the bourgeois parties carry the struggle any further. On the other hand, the Communist Labor Party is a fighting party. We are continuing throughout this campaign not only to draw large segments of working people into active political life, but likewise to spend much of our time, most of our time speaking to the issues that affect the lives of working people. Once a vote is taken, the fight only begins it doesn’t end. Then we would go back and try to mobilize working people against the outrageous legislation that is being passed and that is actually taking back the hard-earned gains of the working class.
The Democrats and Republicans strive at all times to cover up class contradictions, to speak in the name of the “whole people” instead of in the interests of one class or the other. A recent example of this is in the current presidential campaign in which Jimmy Carter has been endorsed by all of labor on the one hand, and by Henry Ford II on the other.
At a meeting in the Detroit area where Jimmy Carter came to town to speak to the state convention of the AFL-CIO, a few days after the Ford strike had started, Leonard Woodcock stood up and announced to the convention that he was not going to ask Jimmy Carter to endorse the Ford strike. At the same time he said he was not going to ask Carter to endorse Henry Ford II and the Ford Motor Co.’s position. We can see from this that even the supporters of the Democratic Party constantly struggle for the party not to take a partisan stand, a stand on the heels of one class or the other. Instead they try to, cover up class contradictions, to gloss over them as opposed to exposing them.
The Communist Labor Party struggles and strives to point out class contradictions every step of the way for the purpose of educating working people and to point out shortcomings and difficulties we are having so we can organize and mobilize the class for the fightback they are waging against the omnipotence of finance capital.
I would just like to say that these characteristics are the key differences between our Party and the bourgeois parties. There is one other key aspect and that is that the Communist Labor Party will lead and is leading the proletariat in the struggle for political power. When you get down to it, every political party is either striving to maintain their class rule, or they are striving to take it away from the existing apparatus. The role of the Communist Labor Party is to lead the fight for the establishment of the proletarian state power. It is obvious that neither the Democrats or the Republicans either want or shall do this. Our party does not bow to lobbyists or big business. Our party fights only in the interests of the oppressed majority. Our Party is a monolithic party and we struggle always and everywhere to carry out the line of our party, Jobs, Peace and Equality!
What’s the status of busing in the San Francisco Schools?
There’s a lot of opposition to busing from people on the School Board and on the Board of Supervisors. They claim it’s too expensive and a cause of youth violence on the Muni. But it’s not busing itself that these people are against.
More fundamental than the question of busing is the struggle for equality by the Negro people. At this time in history, the struggle for busing is the apex of that struggle. No one objected to busing when it was for segregation purposes. Busing has been going on for years. All the fuss started when busing was used for integration purposes. Workers must not be fooled by the anti-busing forces; the sole and most important reason for anti-busing sentiment, is that these people want to maintain segregation. The anti-busing forces are anti-Negro, fascist forces which must be stopped if any progress is to be made by the whole working class. It must be noted, that due to the important position, that of the unskilled and semi-skilled worker, that the Negro and other national minorities play in the Anglo-American working class, the gauge of progress of the working class is the position of the Negro worker.
San Francisco is a very segregated city. There is just no way to integrate the schools except with busing. The people in the city government here who are against busing are against integration and against equality for all people. That’s all there is to it.
The elementary schools have the majority of busing in the city. A court order came down several years ago requiring busing. Two plans were put forward–one by the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Board of Education, and the other by the NAACP. The court said both were OK, so of course the Board chose the Advisory Committee’s plan–the Horseshoe Plan–since it required less busing.
After implementing the Horseshoe Plan, the board approved what they called a “temporary attendance permit system.” The way this works is that anyone who wants to can apply for a temporary attendance permit which allows the student to go to a school other than the one he was assigned to for integration purposes. The school system has approved these permits for almost any reason. As a result, the integration program has been effectively sabotaged from beginning to end.
The busing program was designed from the beginning to convince the people of San Francisco that integration is not what they want. They have tried to convince particularly the minorities that segregation is better. That is why it is essential that the people recognize that busing is part of a larger issue–that issue is equality. Throughout the history of this country the Negro, the Mexican, the Puerto Rican and the Filipino and all the other minorities have been discriminated against and granted only second class citizenship. It has always been the position of the Communist Labor Party that there can be no further social progress until the working class is united around the demand of equality. By allowing certain sections of the people to be discriminated against, you give the capitalists a powerful weapon to split and sabotage the working class movement. The struggle for busing is an essential part of the struggle for equality; it is part of the struggle of the whole working class for a better life.