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[Resolution of the Fourth Internationalist Caucus in the National Committee submitted to the December 4-8, 1982, plenum]
As long ago as 1971, the U.S. ruling class responded officially to what its leading representatives then perceived as an impending economic crisis. At that time the Nixon administration imposed what was called “the new economic policy.” It had a twofold purpose: to try and regain U.S. control of the world market and to make U.S. products more competitive by driving down domestic labor costs. To accomplish these ends, the Nixon administration undertook to redress the balance of payments relationship between the U.S. and its European partners, and to urge that they carry more of the financial burden of their alliance with the U.S. war machine. It also imposed a 90-day wage freeze in this country.
More than ten years later the world capitalist system is in a much more severe economic crisis than was anticipated by Nixon’s advisers. None of the remedies applied by successive governments here and in Europe have resolved the contradictions of their productive system. The downward slide of the economy worldwide has been temporarily checked for brief “recovery” periods, but the overall trend for more than a decade has been down. The highly industrialized nations cannot rid themselves of the glut created by their overpriced goods pouring into the world market. They are forced to check their productive capacity by closing large sectors of their basic industries, thus creating unforeseen social and political problems. This is the situation that prevails in all major capitalist countries of continental Europe, in England and America, and that is beginning to take hold in Japan. The effect of this crisis on the underdeveloped countries has been disastrous; and it has had an adverse effect on the economies of the workers’ states.
A leading U.S. banker, William S. Ogden of the Chase Manhattan Bank, thinks the way out of their crisis of overproduction is for the governments of the industrialized countries to guarantee bank loans to the colonial and semi-colonial countries in order to provide the needed cash for the purchase of all the motor cars, farm implements, heavy construction equipment, and all the rest of the vast quantity of industrial products presently seeking buyers. Ogden says that “without a commitment to increased levels of multilateral credit to the developing countries in trouble, the availability of credit from private sources will shrink drastically.”
He says, “That would spell trouble for all of us, even the banks.” And at least in that he is correct.
The soaring debt of the so-called LDCs (less developed countries) is one factor contributing to plant closings and other economic problems in the MDCs (more developed countries). In September this year more than 30 percent of U.S. manufacturing capacity was idle. This represents a 14-month decline, and the trend continues downward.
In October, U.S. unemployment reached 10.4 percent, 11 million out of work; the most since the Great Depression of the 1930s. These were the official figures. They do not include workers who have used up unemployment benefits and are still out, nor others who never qualified or applied for those benefits, nor those who could only find part-time jobs.
This economic and social stagnation is worldwide, a recognized symptom of approaching death in the advanced stages of capitalism’s decline. The unemployment rate in Germany is 7 percent, in France 9 percent, in Britain and Canada 13 percent, and in Japan an estimated 6 percent.
High levels of unemployment are accompanied by monetary inflation, high prices and interest rates. The current decline in interest rates in the U.S. shows every indication of being only a short interlude.
These problems plague the ruling classes throughout the capitalist world. Their quest for solutions — sometimes irrational, always erratic, never coordinated — dominates world politics. In the U.S. the crisis of their economy drives the employers and the government from one scheme to another, drifting further to the political right. This rightward shift has been the dominant characteristic of bourgeois politics in the United States, with some unevenness, for the past decade; and it will continue to develop in this way so long as the electoral arena is monopolized by the two-party system.
Radicalization of the working class consists of a shift in consciousness, rejection of old values fostered by the ruling class through its social and political institutions, a general awareness that these values (at least some of them) do not serve the interests of working people, and an awakening to the fact that workers (as the largest segment of society) have interests and needs separate from and often opposed to those of the employers and the government that usually seems to side with the employers. The rise of the CIO movement in the mid-1930s was accompanied by such a shift in consciousness by the working masses of this country.
Under those circumstances a strong union consciousness developed in the great class battles to establish the industrial unions. This new stage of consciousness, firmly embedded through struggle, remains as the most durable advance of the working class during that earlier period of resurgence. But the organized sector of the working class was prevented by the Stalinist and Social Democratic leadership of the pre-World War II union movement from advancing further to political class consciousness. These misleaders kept the workers and their organizations locked in the two-party political system, where they remain to this day.
Signs of working class radicalization appear periodically, always in response to employer attacks on working conditions and living standards. Nixon’s wage freeze produced sullen anger that began to find indirect political expression. With the 1971 wage freeze decree there came a noticeable cooling off in the unions of official support for the war in Vietnam. At that time the majority of working people opposed the Vietnam war, as shown in local antiwar ballot initiatives and opinion polls. The George Meany gang in control of the AFL-CIO continued to beat the war drums, but more affiliated unions endorsed and participated in the antiwar movement after the wage freeze began to be felt than before.
Some prominent union officials linked the war drive to the problems of the economy. This indicated a shift in consciousness by large segments of the rank and file in the unions, a shift toward a new political awareness. Such developments may appear to be temporary because they do not immediately lead to actions or result in new organizations. But the antiunion attacks by the government and the employers that prompt militant and thoughtful responses have a cumulative effect. What at first may seem to be only a slight shift in working class mood can very quickly become a new stage of mass radicalization, depending on the depth of the social crisis and severity of the attacks by employers and their government.
In the most recent period, since Labor Day 1981, a variety of demonstrations called by the official labor movement shows the extent of the current radicalization. The Labor Day parade in New York last year numbered somewhere around 200,000; and this year twice as many marched. The unexpected outpouring of union members on these occasions cannot be attributed to any special organizational ability on the part of the union officialdom, nor to any special attraction at the reviewing stand, nor to any high expectations of immediate rewards on the part of the marchers.
The vast numbers of union women and men who came to march included a truly representative cross section of the membership from the crafts and from some of the industrial unions. Women and Blacks were well represented and eager to make their presence known, both as part of and independent of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) contingent and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) contingent. The only way the size and spirit of these huge Labor Day parades can be accounted for is a new mood in the ranks of the unions.
The Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington on September 19, 1981, organized by the official union movement and confined to narrow goals of the top AFL-CIO officialdom, surprised the most optimistic organizers. A half million workers made the trip to Washington on that occasion, most of them because they thought they ought to be there. They did it to show the solidarity of the union movement. This is proof that the union consciousness achieved in past struggles is still an essential part of the developing working class radicalization.
Throughout 1982, mainly in preparation for the general election in November, state and city labor bodies called demonstrations for jobs and against factory closings all across the country. Despite the fact that these demonstrations without exception offered very little in the way of a real perspective, and were intended by their organizers to be more in the nature of pleading with elected state and city politicians for some capitalist table scraps than making real demands on them, nonetheless tens of thousands of workers responded. They did not entertain high hopes that the capitalist politicians would do much for them. These workers wanted to show their own strength and muster a little courage in their union leaderships.
Leading up to the general election a political demonstration on October 24 in San Francisco against Reagan and for jobs, called by the union movement, brought out 70,000 members. This was the largest such demonstration since 1948 when the then untested Taft-Hartley law threatened the “communist” union of dock workers on the Pacific coast.
Another massive demonstration this year showed that the newly awakened consciousness within the working class is different from and begins to go beyond union consciousness, or the elemental concept of class solidarity. This was the June 12, 1982, march in New York City against nuclear weapons and for peace. Combined with similar marches in other cities during that week more than a million demonstrators showed their opposition to the politicians in Washington, most especially the Reagan administration. There were more working people in these June 12 demonstrations than in any of the others. A few union officials conspicuously supported and participated, but they had very little to do with organizing them. The turnout of union members expressed a general dissatisfaction with the way society is run and came in response to the demand for a new order of priorities in the capitalist government. The prevalent demand everywhere was “Jobs Not War.”
Other signs of rising militancy and growing political consciousness in the working class are the determined fightback struggles of long duration—such as the 205-day United Electrical Workers strike against WABCO in Pittsburgh — which frequently force the employers to come to terms with the unions. Even when the outcome is postponed, as in the vote of GM workers on proposed givebacks to the giant auto corporation, or the more recent flat rejection by Chrysler workers of another “save the company” contract, the discontent and rising militancy of the workers directly involved can be decisive in further union-management negotiations and future strike actions.
Examples of union workers finally voting to give up wages and working conditions in the hope of keeping a few underpaid jobs are still plentiful, but they are becoming the exceptions, not the rule. The high hopes of most employers two years ago have been diminished.
The extent and character of working class radicalization develops unevenly and is expressed in all varieties of ways and forms. The recent election in the mine workers union shows the way for similar changes in the leadership of other unions, a direct result of rising rank-and-file militancy. The effect of this growing social and political consciousness among working people is not confined to the unions. It is beginning to appear in the women’s liberation movement; it is bound to be felt in the Black struggle. And there are many more ways it will become manifest.
The returns of the November 2 general elections contained no startling surprises, confirming mainly the anti-Reagan trend that had been predicted by bourgeois analysts. There was a slight increase in the voter turnout, up to 40 percent of the voting age population as against 38 percent four years ago. This does not indicate that vast masses have developed new interest and confidence in the two-party system, especially in light of layoffs and rising prices.
According to a New York Times poll, women, Blacks, and union members were the most solid blocs of voters against Reagan’s reactionary policies. Blacks voted 80 percent for Democrats, union members 65 percent, and women 56 percent. Interviews with individuals in these groups revealed that the vote was anti-Reagan, not pro-Democratic. The Democratic Party held out little hope for any basic change in policy, and few voters expected much. But they were determined to get rid of the Reagan supporters. They voted for the Democrats because the two-party system allows no alternative. The New York Times poll did not ask these anti-Reagan voters their opinion on the need for a labor party.
The only opportunity that voters had to express their opinion on policy matters was the referendums on the so-called nuclear freeze, which most voters believed to be against nuclear weapons. The vote for this proposition in nine states, the District of Columbia, and twenty-nine cities and counties was a landslide. The only state that defeated it was Arizona with a 41 percent vote for and a 59 percent vote against. Everywhere else it carried by big majorities. In Washington, D.C., 70 percent voted for the freeze.
A similar proposition on the ballot in fifty cities, including Milwaukee and San Francisco, called for a transfer of military funds to create “jobs with peace.” This also carried by big majorities, in some cities by 3 to 1. A proposition in Portland, Oregon, demanding withdrawal of U.S. troops and military aid from El Salvador passed overwhelmingly. These lopsided votes against what was perceived as Reagan’s war policy are signs of the present radicalization.
The voters held no “victory” celebrations after the election, and few were sitting back waiting for good times. Instead some potentially influential groups held meetings around the time of the election to talk about what must be done now by working people, antiwar activists, union militants, and others who need jobs and don’t want war. They were all duly impressed with the size of the huge demonstrations and marches of the past year leading up to the election, and likewise with the size of the anti-Reagan vote. But it is now generally recognized in the unions that it is not enough to be big, to have big demonstrations, to get out big votes. Some plausible answers to the urgent economic and social problems of working people are also needed.
Just before the election a three-day “Ohio Labor Conference on Full Employment, Safe Energy, and (less) Military Spending” met in Toledo. This was cosponsored by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the Akron-based International Chemical Workers Union (ICWU), Ohio locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and others. IAM president William Winpisinger spoke on “A Labor Program to Combat the Recession.” Lewie Anderson, director of UFCW’s packinghouse division, spoke from experience about the suicidal consequences of “concession bar gaining.” Tony Mazzocchi, an official of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union (OCAW) spoke about the need for the unions to organize a labor party. Jean Tussey, representing the Cleveland Typographical Union, explained how the union movement can begin the fight for a useful public works program, why the employers and their Democratic Party politicians will not initiate such a program, and the way local unions can start building a labor party. These were the issues and problems discussed in the workshops.
This conference was attended by 250 unionists, many of them secondary officials. In their discussions they tried to answer a question they all were acutely aware of: what do we do when we go back to our local unions about getting some action on the problems and answers that were talked about at this conference?
The larger than expected attendance, the seriousness of the discussion, the commitment of the participants made the meeting unusual for a union gathering of this kind. What made the difference was a new political and social awareness on the part of many who attended, and behind that the radicalization of the workforce some of them claim to represent.
Another conference was held in Detroit November 12-14, two weeks after the one in Toledo. The Detroit conference was sponsored by the publishers of Labor Notes, a rank-and-file newsletter. This conference was called “Organizing Against Concessions,” but the scope of the talks and the discussion included how to transform the unions into class struggle organizations and how to build a labor party based on a new union movement. The speakers and workshop leaders included Bob Weissman, president of United Auto Workers Local 122 at Chrysler Corporation’s stamping plant in Twinsburg, Ohio; Judith Gregory, research director in Cleveland for the Working Women Education Fund, part of the national office workers group Nine to Five, National Association of Working Women; Rod Poineau, president of United Electrical Workers Local 277 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who led a successful three-month strike there by 500 cutting-tool workers this summer at a Gulf and Western Industries Inc. Morse Twist Drill plant; Jim Balanoff, former head of United Steelworkers District 31 in the Chicago-Gary area; and many others with long union experience and credentials.
This three-day weekend conference was attended by 750 radical trade unionists and others. It was different from the Toledo conference because of its sponsorship and its more radical composition. This was the radical wing of the union movement, insofar as any such wing exists at the moment. It was attended by some minor union officials, by others who hope to become part of or associate with a class struggle left wing in the union movement, and by representatives and members of nearly all the radical groups in and around the unions today. This includes the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, International Socialists (organizers of the conference), the Democratic Socialists of America, and all the sects claiming to be Marxists. All such groups with anticapitalist ideas and radical-sounding programs are tolerated in the union movement today, and find some sympathetic responses to their propaganda. This is another sign of the awakening political consciousness within the class, the necessary ingredient in the new mass radicalization as it develops.
The size of this radical-sponsored conference (larger than its organizers expected), which charged a $30 registration fee, is also indicative of the renewed interest in anticapitalist ideas within the working class, the source of strength for the radical movement.
This developing new consciousness within the unions is still only in its initial stages of development. It is largely unformed and unorganized, looking for direction. It exists unevenly within the class as a whole. But it is definitely there, and it provides important new opportunities for revolutionary Marxists.
The radical movement in the United States is undergoing profound change, because of the economic and social crisis in this country, and also because of struggles and upheavals in other parts of the world. Uprisings and revolutions in the colonial and semicolonial countries, the imperialist military attacks on those colonial struggles and threats of atomic war against the Soviet Union by the Reagan administration, the political revolution in Poland and the international working class defense of that revolution against the Jaruzelski military dictatorship have combined to create strong popular sentiment against military dictatorship and against war. This is one ingredient of the working class radicalization; the other major one being mass unemployment accompanied by rising prices.
The struggle for jobs and for protection against inflation is coming to the foreground as the economic crisis deepens, and this forces the main political currents in the working class movement to provide answers to this problem. The Stalinists in the CP are talking about ways to organize the unemployed (preferably through the unions), the purpose being to apply pressure for federal works programs. Organizationally they are setting up a communist youth league, hoping to win unemployed youth to their politics in defense of the Soviet bureaucracy. They claim that the working class radicalization makes the name “communist” more attractive than when they formed the Young Workers Liberation League more than a decade ago, hence the need for a new youth organization.
The Democratic Socialists of America (the party headed by Michael Harrington, the most viable Social Democratic organization in this country) are identified with the general outlines of Winpisinger’s “Labor Program to Combat the Recession” which calls for a federal works program modeled after Roosevelt’s New Deal projects of the 1930s. These make-work projects were to combat the Great Depression. Presumably, similar projects to combat the present “recession” could be less ambitious. Organizationally DSA for the time being seems to prefer working through the trade union structure as part of the “progressive wing” of the labor bureaucracy.
We in the Socialist Workers Party have a carefully drafted Marxist guide to the working class solution of the capitalist crisis. It is called the Transitional Program. It, too, calls for a public works program, among other demands, to help create jobs. But this is different from the similar proposals for make-work projects and for “rebuilding the industrial infrastructure” that are presently brought forward by liberal Democrats in the U.S. Congress, by some union officials in general accord with Winpisinger, and in the radical movement by DSA and the Stalinists. Our demand is for meaningful public works, coupled with a demand to eliminate capitalist profiteering.
In the radical movement all tendencies must relate to the fundamental economic problems that plague the working class, and all look to the union movement as the organizational structure through which these problems can be resolved. But the union movement as presently constituted and with its traditional methods of struggle is incapable of formulating suitable demands.
It is commonly understood by all radical tendencies that no socially effective sector of the working class can advance an economic program to serve the needs of the vast majority without the formation of an independent mass party. How can such a party be formed? What will it stand for and fight for?
These and other questions will be debated among radicals, and tested in the mass movements. However amorphous some of these mass movements may appear to be at the moment, the various radical groups and tendencies must relate to them (each in its own way) and seek recruits and sympathizers. This applies now to the women’s liberation movement, the struggle of Blacks and other minorities for civil rights against discrimination, the antiwar movement, and the student movement.
All the special issues and flagrant injustices that call into being these separate movements, representing effective political segments of society, are now beginning to be seen as directly connected to the economic as well as the political organization of society. Consequently, the unions are beginning to be looked to by activists in the movements of social protest for collaboration and help in the common struggle for economic and social justice.
The main forces of the radical movement have turned their primary attention to the unions, with the professed aim of organizing a mass movement of social protest that will challenge basic tenets of the capitalist system, seeking the establishment of socialism. This is the proclaimed goal of all of these political currents—Social Democrats, Stalinists, and revolutionary socialists. But how this will be achieved is the debate that will continue within the radical movement. The answers of the rival radical tendencies to this question will be tested in the unions and in all the movements of social protest.
The unions are under sustained attack. There is no sign of letup in the intensive two-year bombardment by the employing class. The fury of their offensive mounts as business conditions deteriorate and bankruptcies increase.
Union members continue to fight back. Wherever they have a chance the working members and unemployed ex-members try to strike back, and they have mobilized some effective counterattacks, and even made small gains. But their victories are mostly limited to those industries and corporations that continue to show profits. When wage contracts are negotiated one of the first questions is whether the company is making a profit and how much.
The only weapon the embattled workers have used effectively is their ability to strike, and the strikes that are won often stretch out for many weeks or months. In this way the employers extract a heavy toll for the small concessions they are finally forced to make.
Under these conditions of employer attack, the union structures have so far remained intact. But they are being weakened by the drastic drop in membership due to unemployment in basic industry, by the failure of union leaders to demand of the employers and the government that a useful job be created for every laid-off worker, by the refusal of these same union officials to endorse the demands of women and Blacks for equal treatment, and by “labor’s official endorsement” of the war budget and the government’s foreign policy under any and all administrations.
Decisive changes are taking place in the union movement. These relate to the relationship between the unions and the employers, on one side, and the unions and the working class on the other side.
The unions are working class institutions because they are composed of workers, were created to represent the interests of workers, and cannot exist without worker support. But the entrenched leadership of these unions has, over the past three decades, developed close collaboration with the particular employer groups and corporate management bodies that they deal with day to day. They have finally come to believe that their responsibility is not only to the workforce that they claim to represent, but also to the employer who “provides jobs” for this dwindling workforce. In addition, the needs of all other workers, including former union members who no longer have membership rights because they are laid off, are disregarded by most union officials if there is any apparent conflict with the narrowly conceived interests of “their own” workers.
These are problems for the union membership to decide. They are widely discussed in the union movement today. And where the membership has an opportunity it sometimes elects a new leadership, as happened recently in the mine workers union. But such opportunities do not happen accidentally; they are created. And that takes time and experience, as in the UMWA.
In most unions today the membership in its vast majority is convinced that something is wrong in the union-management relationship, and that what is wrong is the present leadership of their particular union. There is a much clearer understanding of this than there is of the relationship of their own union to the working class as a whole, or even to the rest of the union movement.
There is a restricted and uneven development of class consciousness among the various sectors of the working class which vary along race, sex, nationality, regional, craft, and other more subtle lines of demarcation — such as on-the-job training and union provincialism. Class consciousness develops among broad layers of the class in times of social and economic stress such as the present. Hard times hit all different strata of the class and this breaks through divisions and barriers within the class and helps destroy prejudices.
Inside the union movement new divisions are beginning to appear. One is the division between the many who are for change in their union, the few who are satisfied and opposed to change, and the others who don’t know or don’t think anything can be done. This frequently takes the form of union caucuses and a struggle for leadership in local unions and in the International, though it is also commonly reflected in unorganized grumbling and dissatisfaction. The caucus type of struggle has developed in the Teamsters union during the past several years since the formation of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). A similar development is beginning to emerge in the United Auto Workers, something different from the traditional “popularity caucus” (white slate vs. blue slate) of the post-World War II Reuther era. In the Steelworkers new lines are being drawn for a coming showdown over membership control of that union.
In all of these struggles some of the radical political currents within the working class will find openings, and the political program can determine the outcome, as was the case in the election of the Richard Trumka slate. A social democratic reform program defeated the moribund “pure and simple unionism” of Sam Church.
In the auto union and in the steelworkers union the struggle will probably also center on and test contending programs. The struggle for leadership creates conditions for open debate on different political solutions of the problems facing the unions. The outcome will be determined by how well the potential support for a genuine class struggle program is mobilized and marshalled.
The unions are undergoing profound change. Under pressures of the economic crisis and the heavy blows of the employers, the unions will be transformed by their members in the struggle against the employers, or they will be destroyed by the combined assault of the employers and government. This process will continue, with variations in tempo and intensity, for the next several years. It will be influenced by the unsteady trend of the economy and the unpredictable course of politics in this country.
The central task of our party at this juncture is to explain and apply our Transitional Program in the mass movements, especially the union movement. This means that comrades in different situations will need to relate the specific problems they face to the general crisis of the economy, explain how we think the struggle to solve these problems should begin, and formulate the appropriate demands. We do not have any set of demands for all occasions.
The unions should be our central arena of propaganda, education, agitation, and action. We should follow closely all developments in as many unions as possible in every city and town where we have a party branch. Where we have no members in any unions we should act as if we had.
Wherever a union is on strike we should talk with members of the strike committee, ask what we can do to help the strike, learn all we can about the specific problems of the workers, ask a few questions and make a few suggestions about how to solve some of the workers’ problems and put heat on the boss. In this way we will at least get lively and informative stories for the Militant. Strike leaders may agree to speak at one or two of our regular weekly forums, and we will begin to learn something about the internal life and politics of the union local. When we are actually involved as participants in a strike we can begin to earn a reputation as responsible militants who have good ideas for things which the union ought to do to help win the demands of the workers, and mobilize public support and solidarity for the strike.
One of our main purposes should be to explain and popularize our Transitional Program as it applies in any particular situation. This will take practice, and we will need to listen to how the workers look at new problems they have never seen before and never imagined would hit them — problems with the boss and with the government resulting from the economic and social crisis, and problems with the union and the local officials resulting from the self-imposed limitations of the union and the inability of the union officials to understand the nature of the crisis.
Comrades in our women’s fraction, while working to help organize demonstrations for abortion rights, or other feminist demands, and trying to bring allies and support for these campaigns from the unions and other mass organizations, will also explain the connections between the attack on women and the broader economic and social problems facing working people. Similarly in the Black struggle we should try and explain the causes of injustice and discrimination, how these are the same as the causes of other forms of oppression under capitalism, and what we think must be done to eradicate these evils. This is in addition to our participation in and support for demonstrations against racism, and other efforts to mobilize the Black community for its own demands. In this way we will find allies in the Black community and its organizations for the idea of independent political action.
Our Transitional Program is especially informative for those antiwar activists and others presently involved in support for El Salvador and the revolutions in Central America. We will continue to help build protest demonstrations and other support actions. But many activists in these groups do not make any connection between the foreign policy of the U.S. government and its domestic program. Through our work with these groups we create opportunities to bring together union militants and activists in the various movements of social protest for joint action around demands for a radical change of government policy, both foreign and domestic. Any serious struggle for jobs today necessarily raises the demand to cut military spending, and can raise the need to eliminate the war budget entirely.
Youth radicalization, which seemed dormant to many observers throughout the 1970s, is again visible in the form of the antidraft movement. We should go to the campuses, mingle with and become part of the student movement, talk about the draft and other issues, bring support to legal defense cases, and try to interest students in our program to transform society. Many will see the link between a defiant rejection of militarism and working class struggles.
In general the transitional demands that apply today are: open the books; reduce the workweek with no cut in take-home pay, “30 for 40,” and constant reduction in the hours of work adjusted to the use of robots and other forms of automation which otherwise create “structural unemployment“; an improved escalator clause or COLA; a guaranteed job for every worker upon completion of schooling; free public education for all students, including graduate school; cash relief equivalent to regular union wages for all for whom no job is available; a massive public works program to begin rebuilding the badly deteriorated productive machinery of this country, and to provide low cost public housing, free public services, and other human needs; nationalization of the banks, railroads, utilities, and other major corporations; let the people vote on war.
This listing of some of the most applicable transitional demands means little or nothing to workers or students who have never heard them before, or thought about them. They must be explained. When they are understood the question then arises: how will they be won?
These demands are logical and convincing answers to the problems of our society. But logic won’t win them. It is only an aid to the struggle that is necessary to win them. And that struggle requires a political instrument, a mass labor party based on the unions.
The labor party that can fight effectively for these demands can be created only in the course of the struggle for them. They are our program for a labor party, and the struggle to create that party is an integral part of the struggle for those demands. This can only be accomplished in action, and it may well not be accomplished all at once. The road goes through the daily struggles within the unions to defend present wages and working conditions against the attacks of the employers and to transform the unions in order to better conduct this fight.
The question of independent political action is one of the best means we have of meeting, influencing, and working with those in the union movement who will be receptive to our program. It distinguishes us from every other major political current in the unions and gives us a basis for common activity with other radical-minded workers. We must seek out and be active in any organized groupings of such workers who will be open to our ideas, where they currently exist and where they can be initiated by us around particular struggles or demands, like the labor party. It is a serious error to mistake such real rank-and-file caucus formations, which attract active union members who want to do something to change the political direction of their union, for pure and simple “power” caucuses, which have as their sole purpose the replacement of one set of “leaders” by another.
In the outline of the Transitional Program as prepared by Trotsky, the fundamental concept of working class self-education and preparation to re organize and manage industry and society is introduced. This can be accomplished only through struggle. The struggle for these most logical and reasonable demands, the explanation and defense of them, is the way the working class will educate itself and prepare itself to govern our new society.
Those who aspire to lead the struggle for that new society ought to begin now the careful study, explanation, and systematic introduction and application of these demands in the class struggle.
December 4, 1982
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