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[Edited by reporter.]
These are the points I want to cover in the discussion:
1) The interrelationship between the United States was moves in Central America and against the colonial revolution, what the war moves are against the USSR, and the war moves against the United States working class—this will help show where the freeze movement comes from.
2) What are the principal considerations on the question of disarmament, nuclear disarmament, and defense of the Soviet Union?
3) What is and was our attitude towards the June 12 antiwar action and what strategic aims do we have in building the antiwar movement?
How do we best intervene tactically on the nuclear freeze referenda?
I think the first question is the world situation, and I agree with the resolution and report adopted at the last national convention, which stated that
American imperialism’s capacity to launch a war has been pushed back over the past decade.
The defeat of Washington in Indochina, the liberation of Angola and Mozambique from colonial rule, the victories of the Nicaraguan and Grenadian workers and farmers, the overthrow of the shah by the Iranian revolution, the mobilizations and revolutionary advances in Cuba, the extension of the Vietnamese socialist revolution and the further revolutionary advances in Dampuchea and Laos, the defeat of the U.S.-inspired invasion of Vietnam by Peking—all of these events have politically pushed back the ability of the U.S. rulers to make war.
This report continues under a subhead of “First Strike,”
Washington’s escalating nuclear arms expenditures, deployment of new weapons, and development of new missile systems pose a heinous danger for humanity. These moves demonstrate for all to see that the drive for a first-strike capacity, which would make possible a “successful” nuclear war against the USSR and other workers states, remain the historic logic of decaying capitalism and the longterm goal of the capitalist rulers.
That is, the U.S. war machine and the ruling class are building and deploying a whole new generation of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. This includes the MX missile, the B-1 bomber, Stealth Bomber, Cruise missiles, Pershing-2 missiles, the neutron bomb, as well as expansion of the Trident submarine program.
The Pentagon proposes expenditures of $1.6 trillion over the next five years. This is the most ambitious build-up of nuclear weaponry in United States history. This reflects the fact that between 1970-1975 the United States government doubled its nuclear capacity. In fact, this represents $234 million an hour the United States government is spending on military equipment during the next five years. $15,800 for every man, women, and child in the United States.
Each Trident submarine alone is $1.7 billion and each can be armed with 192 separate nuclear warheads.
As part of this war drive by the United States government, against Central America, against the colonial revolution, Reagan has proposed and won a promise from the NATO alliance to install 572 new missiles in Europe—the neutron bomb, the Cruise missile, and Pershing-2. Haig and Weinberger even threatened maybe we’ll just lob one over there to show that we intend to use it.
Who is that aimed at? It’s aimed at the Soviet Union which is giving aid to Cuban troops in Angola. It is aimed at the colonial revolution. The U.S. ruling class is saying to the Soviet Union, “You better stop it.” As Daniel Ellsberg states, none of these forward based weapons have much function other than first use. That is to develop a possible U.S. first-strike capacity on European soil, aimed at the Soviet Union.
It is clearer and clearer that the European working class saw the ominous implications of these threats by Reagan, Haig and the U.S. ruling class and demonstrated overwhelmingly against it. The largest demonstration in a long time, involving between 1.5 and 2 million people last autumn. And also when Reagan visited this spring, 100,000 demonstrated against both these missiles and the U.S. involvement in El Salvador.
It is clear that this is not just an anti-missile movement. It has a whole component against the concrete wars—against Margaret Thatcher’s wars. The Militant reported in an article entitled “Big London rally is a blow to Thatcher’s wars”:
Some 200,000 people demonstrated here June 6 for unilateral, British nuclear disarmament and against the citing of the U.S. Cruise missiles on British or European soil. This turnout was a tremendous slap in the face to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her war against Argentina.
There also have been demonstrations throughout the world on the question of the United States nuclear buildup and the expansion of its war machine throughout the world. Four hundred thousand people demonstrated in Tokyo, Japan around the slogan “No More Hiroshimas, No More Negasakis.” Who is that aimed at? It’s aimed at the United States government. One hundred thousand also demonstrated in Australia, and thirty thousand in Vancouver.
Now what is the revolutionary position towards these demonstrations? Are they just abstract peace demonstrations? Granma analyzed the European demonstrations as follows:
The foreign ministers of the NATO member states meeting in Brussels admitted that the role played by nuclear arms had become the main topic of political discussions in the Western World, mainly among young people, and they voiced their concern over the movement that is now developing from Norway to Greece, and from the Iberian Peninsula to the Danube.
The huge protest demonstrations that were held last year in dozens of European capitals and cities are being overshadowed by those of this year. In Italy, where Pertini’s government hastened to cede the territory of Comiso, in Sicily, for the deployment of 112 missiles, over 600,000 people have signed a document expressing their protest over the transformation of the Italian peninsula into a NATO nuclear base ...
Millions of people have taken to the streets in the last few months, determined to cut off the heads of the 20th century Hydra—the arms race, nurtured by capitalist war-mongering circles. In June, Europe will become an impregnable bastion in the antinuclear struggle. Let us hope that it remains as such until the routing of the four horsemen of the apocalypse marks the beginning of a lasting peace for all.
The United States wants to deploy the 572 new Pershing and neutron and Cruise missiles in Western Europe. This act alone would place these U.S. nuclear weapons within four to six minutes of targets within the Soviet Union. For the first time in history, the United States would have the capacity to destroy a large number of the Soviets’ land based ICBMs in their silos. Seventy-nine percent of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons are based on land.
What has been the Kremlin’s response to the United States’ nuclear deployment?
Brezhnev gave a speech in the Soviet Union at the 17th Congress of the Soviet Trade Unions about the Soviet Union’s willingness to come to an agreement about nuclear arms reduction, which was reprinted in Granma on March 23, 1982.
Brezhnev said,
Comrades, the militarist course and the aggressive policy adopted by the NATO bloc, headed by the United States, obliges us to take measures to maintain our country’s defense potential at the required level. This is a pressing need, resulting from the present world situation, which needless to say, forces us to divert considerable resources to the detriment of our plans for peaceful construction ...
You’re all familiar with the Soviet Union’s concrete, longterm proposals on this problem, beginning with a three-fold reduction of both sides’ nuclear arsenals in Europe, both existing and projected, until the entire continent is free of tactical and intermediate range nuclear arms. We are also aware of the fact that the United States side continues to avoid discussing these problems—to say nothing of solving them—resorting instead to the absurd demand for a unilateral disarmament on the part of the Soviet Union, which Washington has the effrontery to call the “Zero Option” ...
I can inform you, in order to propitiate a fair agreement on a significant reduction of nuclear weapons by both sides in Europe, and set a good example, the Soviet leadership has decided on a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons in the European part of the USSR. We are prepared to freeze such weapons, in terms of both quality and quantity, for those already deployed and halt the replacement of the old missiles, known as the SS-4 and the SS-5, by the more modern SS-20 ... [Emphasis added.]
We will continue. We have already said that if both sides were to agree on a moratorium, we would be willing, as a demonstration of good will, to reduce unilaterally, the number of nuclear weapons in Europe with a view to a future agreement upon reduction ...
At the same time, we feel it is our duty to issue a clear warning that if the United States government and its NATO allies were to trample on the people’s desire for peace, in spite of everything, and decide to deploy hundreds of new U.S. missiles in Europe, which can destroy targets in the USSR, a different strategic situation would then exist in the world. There would be a new and real threat to our country and its allies, from the United States. This would force us to take countermeasures that would place the other side, including the United States and its territory, in the same situation. This must be kept in mind.
That is, once the United States had said they were going to deploy 572 first-strike missiles in Europe, the Kremlin said, NO, we want a freeze and secondly we don’t advocate a first-strike in this situation.
NATO responded by saying that “NATO’s top officials refused yesterday to pledge that they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in Europe and argued that such a promise would harm the Western alliance.”
So here’s the Soviet Union stating its position and the United States aggressively intervening, trying to establish missiles in Europe. So when you look at the peace movement or the antiwar movement in Europe, who is it aimed at? Is it a bilateral movement? That is, is its focus on rendering equal blame on the U.S. and USSR? No, its central axis is against Washington putting 572 nuclear missiles in Europe!
Whose class interests would serve a nuclear freeze? Who gains if the 572 nuclear weapons going into Europe are stopped? These weapons are aimed at the Soviet Union; a freeze on the deployment of missiles into Europe is objectively aimed at the United States.
You can say that the main question is the war in Central America. And as Barry [Sheppard] has stated in previous reports, and reiterates here today: The party doesn’t want to get involved in the nuclear disarmament movement, even though we support the unilateral disarmament wing of the movement. Barry states, that’s not our central focus—our central focus is Central America.
However, the United States is threatening the Soviet Union today. What is our class position on that? This is where, even though we have no confidence in the Kremlin bureaucracy, we have to see what the positions of other revolutionaries around the world are and learn from them. That is why Cuba, in its Report to the Second Party Congress, states
Tens of thousands of atomic weapons hang over mankind’s head like the sword of Damocles. Never before has man gone through such an experience. It may be said that the most important problem of our epoch, for all peoples, is to avoid the outbreak of another world war. Absurd as it may seem and unbelievably catastrophic as its outcome would be, that is the real danger. The peoples will not remain indifferent to it.
And in the report to the Cuban Communist Party on International Relations at the Second Congress, the resolution that was passed stated,
The battle for peace is one of the most basic objectives of the Second Congress. The struggle to keep imperialism from pushing humanity into a nuclear holocaust has greater significance and immediacy than ever before. Our country has worked hard for a just and universal peace, defended the creation of an atmosphere of detente, and supported disarmament and an end to the arms race. We will continue working along these lines. Our party gives great priority to establish a broad world front of all those who defend peace and peaceful coexistence in order to actively oppose the resurgence of war-mongering policies, imperialist and reactionary blackmail, and interventionism. We will continue to devote our most active efforts to this vital priority task.
It’s not just the question of intervention in Central America. It is also the question of U.S. imperialism’s nuclear blackmail of the Soviet Union.
And that is why the Second Session of the UN Conference of the United Nations was called. Leaving aside illusions unnecessarily fostered in the United Nations, the aim of this conference was to united people around the question of disarmament. Who organized this conference? The Movement of the Nonaligned, headed by Cuba.
Just go back and research these facts, comrades, and then we’ll see where this movement is coming from. A movement against U.S. imperialist war moves. Against both the expansion of nuclear weapons and against intervention in Central America.
There is an interesting discussion in the party and elsewhere on the question of nonproliferation. Barry states that somehow if you’re for nonproliferation you’re a racist, that is you’re not for giving the atomic bomb to the PLO, IRA, and other countries and organizations.
Let’s have a real debate. Let’s not throw around the label of racism in our party. The Militant cites the position of the Vietnamese leadership on the question of nonproliferation. Are you going to call the Vietnamese leadership racist? The Vietnamese leadership says, “That is why we strongly support the objectives of disarmament. Recently as an expression of our peace policy and our willingness to limit the danger of nuclear war, we have decided to participate in the Treaty on Nonproliferation.”
And also the revolutionary government of Grenada. Maybe they take a “third camp” position (according to the logic of Barry’s arguments)? Grenada has said that it is for and adopted the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace.” Grenada has said that the first point under this is to “1) Prohibit the introduction of nuclear weapons in the region.” Now, the Grenadans don’t say U.S. nuclear weapons. But, that’s the aim of their statement. That’s the aim, because who is going to introduce nuclear weapons? It is the United States. Who is deploying nuclear weapons throughout the world? It is the U.S. imperialists who are the proliferators.
That is not to say we are not for the right of Cuba or other nations threatened by imperialism to have nuclear missiles, in a given situation, such as existed in 1963. But is that the question on the minds of the antiwar masses of the world today? To say as Barry does, that our response to imperialist war moves should be that the PLO, the IRA, the Nicaraguans, should have the nuclear bomb is wrong. The correct perspective is the mobilization of the masses throughout the world to defend those revolutions. That’s the question. We should not get sidetracked into this other thing.
And that is why the position I advocate is the same as the Cubans have taken. In the speech that Carlos Rafael Rodriguez gave to the Second Session on Disarmament, which was partially reprinted in the Militant, he ended up by saying,
But beyond this powerful manifestation by the states and their governments, there is a stronger, more decisive force. Peace, Mr. President, is now in the hands of the people. It matters not that in this varied Assembly, one hears the voice of those who refuse to accept the nuclear freeze [emphasis added] and that those who refuse to stop atomic testing, bring the glare of atomic explosions even here. It does not matter. It is we, and not they, who are right. The peoples need food, schools, medicines, hospitals, factories and not tanks, battleships, and nuclear arsenals. Let us, then, join the action of all the peoples to condemn the harbingers of death who are the same ones who for centuries have taken advantage of the peoples’ misery. If we persist, it will be possible to impose upon them the decisions that today remain fruitless and mere useless papers. And we must persist, with the confidence that behind us awaiting our leadership, [The Cubans are willing to lead this movement and dynamically move it forward.] There are along all the breadth of the world, hundreds of millions prepared for this battle for disarmament and peace. Thank you very much.
That’s what he said.
Who opposes the nuclear freeze? Politically, who opposes it? Reagan does. The San Francisco Chronicle of July 18, 1982 has an article headlined, “Nuclear freeze drive has Reagan worried.” The article says,
Strong support in California for the nuclear freeze initiative, Proposition Twelve on the November ballot, has brought appeals for help from the White House to defeat the measure. Fearing a rebuff for President REagan in his home state and serious setbacks for loyal Republican candidates in California, opponents for Proposition Twelve met with White House counselor Edwin Meese last week and has scheduled more meetings with Reagan aides tomorrow. Reagan opposes the immediate freeze as proposed by the initiative.
And again in the July 27, 1982 San Francisco Chronicle, “Reagan strategy on the nuclear freeze.” Article after article. Again, “Fearing damage to his bargaining position with the Soviet Union, Reagan yesterday condemned a nuclear freeze resolution pending in the House and endorsed a substitute measure that supports his policy.”
What Reagan is talking about is not supporting the nuclear freeze but expanding the MX-missile and the whole Pentagon arsenal. He is talking about the Pentagon’s strategy for threatening a massive first strike and a prolonged atomic war. Most comrades have seen this in the papers throughout the country—that the defense department policymakers have accepted the premise that nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union could be protracted and have drawn up their first strategy for fighting such a war. The New York Times described this as follows:
Defense Department policy-makers have accepted the premise that nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union could be protracted and have drawn up their first strategy for fighting such a war.
In what Pentagon officials term the “first complete defense guidance of this administration,” drafted for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s signature, the armed forces are ordered to prepare for nuclear counterattacks against the Soviet Union “over a protracted period.”
The document called “Fiscal Year 1984-1988 Defense Guidance,” will form the basis for the Defense Department’s budget requests for the next five fiscal years.
It’s a continuation of a psychological war preparations to try and get the American people to accept the false security of nuclear bomb shelters, for civil defense systems where you turn cities into bomb shelters. And you give people “escape routes” to somewhere a hundred and more miles away. This is what the Pentagon is putting on radio and TV, trying to get the American people to buy the concept of a “winnable” nuclear war. And Alexander Haig when he was Secretary of State threatens to demonstrate the use of nuclear weapons in Europe. More and more people are saying, “Bullshit! We don’t buy it. The main question is to get rid of the bomb.” That’s what we see, the deep sentiment for peace which is totally progressive, and that’s why we should support it.
The American ruling class threatens nuclear war against the Soviet Union under the guise of the nuclear defense of the United States. And what’s it aimed at? Threatening and blackmailing the Soviet Union.
The June 18, 1982 editorial in the Militant answers, “NO” to its question, “Will a nuclear freeze help bring peace?” That’s wrong. The editorial states,
The argument has been raised that you can be for both. That is, you can actively oppose Washington’s war drive and, as part of that effort, press for the nuclear freeze—that a freeze is at least a step in the right direction.
We think this is a bad mistake. Certainly, if Washington feels constrained to slow down the rate of its nuclear buildup or even curtail it, no rational person will object. But even if that is accomplished, the danger of war and its implicit threat of the use of nuclear weapons, would not be diminished by one iota.
Regardless of the intentions of some of its supporters, the nuclear freeze proposal is an obstacle to the fight against war and the nuclear threat. It’s an obstacle because it creates a smokescreen which makes it more difficult for people to see clearly where the source of the war danger lies.
Not true. It is far more effective to accept a nuclear freeze proposal. And then you explain our entire revolutionary program of why we’re for disarming the warmakers in Washington. Why it was Washington that dropped the first and only atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Why it is Washington that’s expanding the nuclear arsenal! Why it is Washington who is making all these war moves around the world. We have to explain the world situation and the dangers of U.S. imperialism.
Why is it that the Kremlin, the Cubans, the Grenadans, the Vietnamese, all recognize that the objective effect of the nuclear freeze movement is unilaterally against imperialism. We incorrectly counterpose the movement against imperialism to the movement against nuclear war. They are part and parcel of the same fight against U.S. imperialism.
What are the principal considerations on the question of nuclear disarmament? We correctly do not call for bilateral nuclear disarmament. We’ve correctly stated in a report to the 1977 SWP convention:
We have held for more than two decades, along with the rest of the Fourth International—the position of the immediate unconditional, nuclear disarmament of all the imperialist powers.
We do not advocate this for the Soviet Union. The SWP does not and the Fourth International does not, insist upon the Soviet Union disarming unilaterally in the face of Washington’s arsenal. What we do insist upon is explaining how a revolutionary leadership in a workers state would conduct itself on this question. How it would conduct open diplomacy, how it would hold no negotiations on life-and-death matters in secret, and how it would seek to scrap these death-dealing arms as soon as possible instead of engaging in a race with the American ruling class in this madness.
But, how would we, as revolutionists if we were in the leadership of the Soviet Union today, how would we propose to get rid of the U.S. missiles in Europe? What would be our proposal on this vital question on defense of the Soviet workers state? We most often disagree with the Kremlin bureaucracy on these questions. The same 1977 convention report expresses that as follows:
To judge military moves by the Kremlin, and to say no to some of them, is not new either. In 1963, the Soviet bureaucracy broke the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests that had been agreed to earlier. The moment they broke it, the Militant came out with an editorial condemning his move by the Soviet bureaucracy. The Militant explained that whatever they gained in new bits of technological information was marginal and overwhelmingly lost in the demoralizing effect this had on the world working class, to the edge it gave the imperialist warmakers to cloak themselves in the banner of disarmament and the way it disoriented the growing sentiment for disarmament in the capitalist world.
Yes, we do support a growing movement and mass sentiment for disarmament in the capitalist world. And that is why Joseph Hansen emphasized the political defense of the workers states over the military defense. Joseph Hansen stated,
The defense of the workers states occurs on two levels, political and military. Of these the political is the more important by far....
On the issue of nuclear bombs, what constitutes an adequate number? It appears to me that a stockpile large enough to obliterate humanity once marks a natural quantitative limit so far as use values are concerned.
This natural limit on military needs might be designated Armageddon One.
In the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons, a process that is being advanced at a truly American pace, Armageddon One offers possibilities as the point that rational beings might select for converting quality into quantity; that is, reducing the number of bombs in consonance with their rise in destructiveness. Under this sliding scale, the total death-dealing capacity of each side would remain constant. Neither side could go above Armageddon One without violating the contract....
To me it appears quite clear that the Kremlin, by participating in this mindless race, is dealing terrible blows against the defense of the Soviet Union. For no matter how huge the Kremlin’s stockpile might be or how accurate its delivery systems, the Soviet Union cannot escape the fate of the rest of humanity once the bombs begin to be exchanged.
Now let us turn to the political defense of the workers states. This means above all mobilizing popular support....
Had Brezhnev challenged Carter to join him in reducing nuclear stockpiles to a maximum capability of destroying humanity only once, it appears to me that Carter would have had some difficulty in replying. Naturally, it would have been preferable if Brezhnev had proposed in addition a schedule leading at short intervals to a one-half capability, one-fourth, one-eighth, and so on. Why shouldn’t rapid decay rates be imposed on stockpiles of nuclear arms?
But Brezhnev will not do that. Nor Carter. Clearly it would be a fatal policy to rely on either Washington or Moscow to halt the arms race and dismantle their nuclear stockpiles.
That is if there was a revolutionary leadership in the Soviet Union, it would propose Armageddon One, that is, both sides going down to the point where we only had enough to blow up each other one time. That’s what a revolutionary government would do in the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin bureaucracy has not come that far. But they propose to stop with Armageddon Forty. The Kremlin proposes just cut them off now, freeze the nuclear weapons at the present numbers. Instead of the United Stages going up from Armageddon Forty to Armageddon Eighty as Reagan proposes to do with his 1.7 trillion defense expenditures, the Kremlin says let’s stop the arms race right now, let’s freeze nuclear weapons.
What’s our response to that? What do we say when the masses begin to march in the streets demanding a halt to the arms race? The Militant says it’s a “sham and a fraud.” Look at how our current Militant position contrasts with the April 1963 Militant on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. There the Militant ran the front page headline “Why doesn’t Kennedy agree to a ban on nuclear tests?” The article says:
The peace movement in this country can make a big advance by mounting a hard-hitting campaign for an immediate ban on nuclear tests.
An end to the poisonous blasts is an urgent and realizable goal. The fight to achieve it could bring a maximum unity of the antiwar forces and win significant new support.
And we stated that the Soviet Union is for general disarmament. But a partial test-ban treaty is a positive step. And in the Militant article dated August 5, 1963 on the test-ban treaty and the Sino-Soviet rift, by William F. Warde [George Novack] and Joseph Hansen, we end up by stating, “Every partial step toward the disarmament of capitalism is in the interests of the working class, including even such a narrow, limited measure as the partial test-ban treaty.”
Could we run a front page headline like the one we ran in 1963 today? The same theme in the Militant today would read something like: “Why doesn’t Reagan agree to a freeze on nuclear weapons?” Could we write that today? Obviously, NO. That’s not our position today. Our position is the empty and purely propagandist abstraction “unilateral nuclear disarmament of the imperialist warmakers.” But where doe that leave us tactically in the movement today? Self-isolated from the masses who are demonstrating by the millions in the streets.
We don’t agree with every proposition that the Kremlin comes up with, far from it. SALT II was a cover for expansion of the arms race. It said, “OK, let’s not expand at the rate we’re doing, but let’s expand at a lesser rate.” SALT II gave a cover to imperialism to expand its nuclear arsenal, and we opposed it for that reason.
But what is a freeze? What does it mean? A Nuclear Freeze calls for halting to the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. In 1963 the Socialist Workers Party supported the halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. In an editorial in the Militant of June 17, 1963 we stated: “Though a test ban cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered as ending the nuclear arms race or as a beginning of disarmament, it would nonetheless be a positive step [emphasis added]. For nuclear testing is endangering the biological capital of all mankind.” These nuclear tests put tremendous amounts of radioactivity in the air. We were against that then. But right now, there is one major nuclear accident in the United States once every three months. So why aren’t we against the further testing, deployment and production of more nuclear weapons? Isn’t it in the interests of the American working class to stop that?
Who is going to agree to the freeze? The Soviet Union has already agreed to the freeze. The United States is the one who is not going to agree to the freeze. And therefore, in this context it is a unilateral demand. Our task is to put the nuclear freeze demand into positive action by mobilizing this sentiment in the streets against the warmakers in Washington.
Of course, a nuclear freeze will not by itself bring peace. It is a tactic that provides greater opportunities to explain where the real danger comes from—U.S. imperialism—and to participate with forces in the world that want to mobilize against the real war danger of U.S. imperialism.
Our ultimate aim and the only way for the world to be really in peace is for the capitalist class to be disarmed by the working class in the United States—that is, total unilateral disarmament. And abolish the social system that has created those weapons—capitalism.
But the question is, how do we get there? How do the masses of the American people begin to understand this and how do we organize them to participate in a movement?
One more point before I go on. We’re talking about nuclear disarmament here. When Lenin and Trotsky opposed disarmament proposals in their times they rejected the notion of capitalist states coming to a rational agreement to disarm. They correctly pointed out then, as we do now, that only the workers can disarm the capitalists. Some of the comrades have accused me of saying, “I’m for taking guns away from the Indians or guns away from the Cubans.” That’s an obvious fake debate. We are talking about the mass sentiment for nuclear disarmament. I’m not for taking the guns away from the Cubans or other anti-imperialist fighters. I am for mobilizing the masses—today—to disarm the capitalists’ nuclear arsenal—that logic leads ultimately to the final and total disarmament of the capitalist class.
What is and was our attitude towards the June 12 demonstration and what role do revolutionaries play in this movement? The largest demonstration in the United States history in a single city. The Cubans saluted the one million people in the streets. We have to begin with our concept of the united front—the Leninist-Trotskyist conception that you work with the masses at their existing level of consciousness against U.S. imperialism. This is Lenin, Trotsky’s, and the Communist International’s classic position on the United Front. Trotsky states in 1922 in his report to the Executive Committee of the Communist International:
The Communists as has been said, not only must not oppose such actions but, on the contrary, must assume the initiative for them, precisely for the reason that the greater is the mass drawn into the movement, the higher its self-confidence rises, all the more self-confident will that mass movement be and the more resolutely will it be capable of marching forward, however modest may be the initial slogans of this struggle. [Emphasis added.]
This is the same role we played in opposition to the Vietnam war. The current anti-war movement now cries out for our leadership. Barry, speaking for the leadership of the party, says we do not want to play a leadership role in this movement. We basically take a sectarian and abstentionist role toward participating in this movement. And it’s also clear that we do not see as our foremost task, building this movement against imperialist war in Central America and the colonial world together with opposition to the nuclear build-up in the United States. What we’re concerned with is only the vanguard of the class, rather than the mass movement that exists. This is dead wrong. It is a new mass vanguard approach. That is, we’re only interested in the little group of people that agree with us on every single point in this movement. We’re not interested in getting out to the broad masses and educating them on all these questions. That is, our starting point is 180 degrees different if you go back and look at the position the SWP and Leninist-Trotskyist Faction defended against the International Majority Tendency comrades in the dispute in the Fourth International around the anti-Vietnam war movement. You will find that our position is exactly reversed. Mary-Alice Waters stated in her report “A Criticism of the United Secretariat Majority Draft Resolution on `The Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe’ ” (1973)
The starting point for revolutionary Marxists is not our own subjective concerns, or the immediate outlook of the “vanguard.” We start with what is objectively in the interests of the broadest working masses and what must be done to advance the class struggle nationally and internationally. We never start with the vanguard and then try to make its interests and concerns compatible with the needs of the working class. We do just the opposite. We start with the objective needs of the masses. We then mobilize and organize the broadest forces we are capable of reaching and influencing and lead in struggle to win concrete demands that correspond both to the needs and the consciousness of the broad masses and than can move the struggle forward and thereby heighten their level of consciousness. We employ methods of struggle to increase the confidence of the masses in themselves and teach them to rely on their own independent power.
The difference between these two starting points—the concerns of the vanguard for the objective needs of the working masses—is neither minor nor hairsplitting. From the two different starting points flow two divergent courses of action. One tends toward maximalist demands and so-called “militant” actions that presumably reflect the level of consciousness of the “vanguard.” In reality they are adaptations to its political backwardness. The other is firmly based on the method of the Transitional Program, which aims at mobilizing the masses in struggle whatever their level of consciousness and moving them forward toward the socialist revolution.
We actually started out in a correct vein in our initial assessment of June 12 and the nuclear freeze movement. The Militant April 16, 1982 editorials I reprinted and which is included in your plenum folders is headlined: “An Idea is Sweeping the United States.” Not a counter-revolutionary idea, not a pro-war idea, not a bourgeois pacifist idea, a good idea! And we solidarized with that sentiment. This editorial refers to “the mushrooming antiwar movement itself”—at that point we thought the anti-nuclear upsurge was an antiwar movement. However here at Oberlin, it is now claimed in the reports by Mac Warren and Nelson Gonzalez that the antiwar movement doesn’t exist yet! We stated in our initial response to the June 12th nuclear freeze movement that “the massive eruption of opposition to the bomb should be welcomed by every proponent of peace, justice and human survival.” Another Militant editorial of April 9th, 1982, “On to June 12 Disarmament March” is what I consider correct in its assessment of June 12th and I totally agree with. We should have gone into June 12th, fought for it and built it, but we didn’t. We had initially explained that the June 12 disarmament demonstration “can and must be built on a giant scale.” We then stated in this same April 9th Militant editorial,
Already in the initial stage of organizing, substantial forces are involved and clearly more can be brought in. The influential American Friends Service Committee, and New York’s prestigious Riverside Church are among a range of church forces helping to build the action. The principle pacifist groupings have joined in along with such anti-nuclear and antiwar forces as the National Mobilization for Survival. [Emphasis added.]
We called them anti-nuclear and antiwar forces in this editorial. Since then, we have reassessed these forces as “prowar, petty bourgeois or bourgeois pacifists.” We have taken a sectarian stance towards June 12th and its leadership. This is wrong. Larry Seigle has said that it would be a “sham and a fraud” if a demonstration took up just the issues of peace. This reveals a complete failure to understand what the sentiment in the American population is. This “peace” sentiment is a massive antiwar sentiment. It comes, not out of the witchhunt of the 1950’s, or after World War II, it comes on the shoulders of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Larry Seigle said it would be a sham and a fraud. Barry said, in a report before June 12, the demonstration could be a power demonstration, an anti-Soviet demonstration. Other comrades have said that the New York demonstration of over one million people was basically a Democratic Party demonstration built by the news media. The real action proved otherwise. But we should have leaded when earlier in a Chicago march for peace, as reported in the April 23, 1982 Militant, 25,000 people demonstrated, saying no to nuclear weapons, no to nuclear war. The El Salvador theme was throughout the Chicago demonstration.
The current false assessment of this antiwar movement shows a lack of understanding the deep sentiment for peace in the United States and the deep antiwar sentiment in the American working class. If I had more time, I’d go through all the examples of this sentiment from the Agent Orange Vets committee, the anti<196>Love Canals and the many anti-intervention local groups. I thought we had corrected the mistakes we made around May 3 and May 9, on our assessment of the anti-draft sentiment and whether comrades should register. We are however repeating the mistakes in relation to June 12 and the nuclear freeze movement. This movement comes from a wholly massive opposition in the United States today against both nuclear war and against U.S. intervention in El Salvador. Eighty percent are against U.S. intervention in El Salvador. In a telephone survey in the Bay area, 81% opposed U.S. troops going into Lebanon. So who is going to go out there and organize that support, bringing all those forces together. We isolate ourselves from it, we continually separate ourselves from these antiwar forces which we can influence. There are many other anti-capitalist elements in this, against the Love Canals, against the MX missiles, against Rocky Flats, the growing demand for jobs and using the funds from the military budget for social services. After June 12, the party was shaken. We were forced to recognize that the June 12th was a massive blow to the ruling class war drive. Well, how did it turn from possibly a prowar demonstration or anti-Soviet demonstration to a massive blow against war and U.S. policy?
After the June 12th demonstration Doug Jenness’s article in the Militant, “A Million Marchers Demand End to the War Drive,” went back to the earlier assessment of the Militant editorials. Doug Jenness stated that there were three themes to this demonstration. One is opposition to U.S. nuclear buildup. Number two, opposition to another Vietnam, U.S. out of El Salvador. Number three, opposition to cuts in the standard of living, that is the war at home.
Now, the SWP has different concepts around these three themes, for instance, our concept unilateral disarmament. What slogan do we raise to advance the consciousness in the movement? Unilateral disarmament? We had a big debate in the Northern California District. The decision there was to advance the slogan for “unilateral disarmament.” The masses are not going to understand that. Slogans expressing this idea better given the current stage of consciousness are more appropriate such as, “No nuclear weapons,” “No MX missiles,” “No neutron bombs,” “Shut down Rocky Flats.” We have to think of ways to intervene. We don’t just say, “unilateral disarmament” everyone get over here for “unilateral disarmament,” and that’s our caucus. No way! Do we go into the coalitions with the slogans, “Against Imperialist Wars” or “Against the Capitalist Offensive at Home”? That would be incorrect. Instead we utilize transitional slogans such as: “U.S. Out of Central America, U.S. Out of El Salvador, Hands Off Nicaragua,” “Jobs, Not War,” “Human Needs, Not the Military Budget,” “Social Services, Yes, Nuclear Weapons, No,” “Stop Racist Attacks,” “Support Women’s Rights.” These are some of our slogans linking the concrete living struggles of the American working class against the government.
There are thousands of activists out there that want political direction and leadership. The foremost task for the party should be to get involved in this movement and help lead this fight against U.S. war drive. That’s the road forward, that’s the way we have to go. And, the question is, who can we unite with? There are forces who are not going in a Democratic Party direction. They are not all prowar. There is a division out here. Norma Beckers says, the best way to move the movement forward is to “defeat the nuclear warriors in November.” But Dave Dellinger argues, “we have to build a disarmament movement that doesn’t ignore the cause of armament. It would be a great mistake if the disarmament movement got diverted into the Democratic Party.” Dave McReynolds says, “the Democratic Party follows where the pressure is. It doesn’t lead. It’s an illusion to think the Democratic Party will be the agency that will lead the disarmament movement.” And they say, basically, that the movement must continue in the streets against the U.S. nuclear buildup. The Guardian takes a similar stance in its editorials.
Can we unite with them on that question? Yes. Dellinger, McReynolds, The Guardian also agree we should take up the concrete war in El Salvador. So can we unite with them? Yes, we can. Instead of looking for “the split” in the movement as Barry does we should be looking for the forces to organize the demonstrations and build the movement. What about CISPES? Can we work with them on these questions? How do we politically educate? Do we just automatically separate ourselves? Barry said we tail-ended CISPES in June 12. They put out a leaflet around nuclear war and El Salvador. It was an educational process to get the leaflet out. We supported that leaflet, we should have built the June 12th demonstration more aggressively with the CISPES/coalition leaflet. What about some of the other groups, Grenadan groups, Nicaraguan groups, NBIPP, NBUF, Jesse Jackson, plus the tens of hundreds of other organizations representing tens of thousands of anti-war Militants that we can get involved in this movement. We’re not isolated. We’ve got to get involved. What about the labor movement itself. There’s a big debate going in the AFL-CIO and in the ranks of labor over what positions to take towards nuclear weapons, what positions to take concerning U.S. intervention in El Salvador. The IAM and the UAW, ACTWU, ILWU, AFSCME and NEA and many other unions have come out against both concrete wars and against nuclear weapons. We must fight within the labor movement to have the unions endorse and build the antiwar/antinuclear demonstrations.
We must get involved to build the movement in all its aspects. It’s not just a single thing. It involves a whole range of different issues, different axes. Against the U.S. intervention in El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, and building solidarity with these revolutions. The anti-nuclear groups and the anti-draft groups are integral factors in this movement.
This fall there’s going to be a big discussion on campuses, among young people throughout the country about the draft. We must mobilize to organize these antidraft actions which are a response to real war moves, imperialist wars. Trade union formations, whether they’re Trade Unionists in Solidarity with El Salvador (T.U.S.E.S.) or a whole range of other unions formations we must get involved, participate, and help lead.
The Nuclear Freeze referendum will be on the ballot in seven states and large cities with 25 percent of the United States’ population. It has already been endorsed by 199 city councils, 444 New England town meetings and 10 state legislatures. President Reagan has argued against the freeze referendum because he thinks that a freeze would perpetuate a United States strategic inferiority in nuclear arms and undermine American arms control negotiators in Geneva.
Now, where does the freeze movement come from? Some comrades say it comes from Edward Kennedy. No, this is not correct. The Militant says that in California it comes from Harold Willens, the millionaire industrialist. No, this is not completely accurate. Willens supports it, he helped organize it in California. During the anti-Vietnam war he was in the Business Executives Move for Peace. He helped us in NPAC. Did that make NPAC a “pro-war” group? So, just by Harold Willens actually helping the freeze does not make it a proimperialist thing. Does it come from the State Department, as Fred Halstead says? I don’t think so. In fact, if it comes from a State Department, it might not come from the U.S. State Department, it might come from another (Soviet) State Department. But where does the actual wording, the actual origin of this movement come from? Who did originate it? Comrades say without a shred of evidence it comes from Kennedy and the Democratic Party. When did the ruling class and the Democratic Party get into the business of mobilizing millions in the streets against the U.S. war drive? It actually was started by a woman, Randall Forsberg, in Boston who introduced it in 1979 in a speech to a conference in Lousiville for the Mobilization for Survival. That’s where it came from. You know how it got on the ballot in Montana? A 34-year-old cattle rancher and electrician from Charlo, Montana, needed John McNamer, he’s a Vietnam veteran with a bronze star, organized to put it there. He has an 80 acre cow and calf operation he finances with construction work, his wife is a teacher. The Pentagon was proposing to put the MX missile in Montana. Let me quote from the Washington Post article on this:
It all started one night last August. “I was concerned with the nuclear situation in general, like a lot of people here,” he said in an interview. But when he heard that the federal government might try to base MX missiles in Montana that pushed him into action.
“Driving home one night I just thought about what I could do,”he said. “I thought up the idea of a `people’s petition’ I called it, which said, `We the undersigned express our opposition to the placing of the MX missile system in Montana, and to the escalating development and deployment of nuclear weapons by the United States.’ My wife and I signed it first.”
The McNamers passed their petition on to friends, who signed and passed it on again. In four months they had 11,000 signatures on the petition. Then they sent it to a lot of local and federal officials.
In February, McNamer started a second petition drive, this one to put a resolution on the state ballot next November. The resolution declares that the state opposes deployment of the MX missile in Montana, also opposes the further testing, deployment or development of nuclear weapons by any nation. And he collected the signatures for it. It’s basically just a question of getting the petition out in front of people and they’re willing to sign it. It’s just an amazing turn around in attitude in just the last six months. How does he explain it? People are scared to death, for one thing, he replied, it’s a great moral issue, too, the MX is an immoral waste of our resources. Montanans, he said, know that the MX missile would give the United States the ability to strike Soviet missiles inside their silos and they don’t want their country to have such a first-strike capability. Basically, the Pentagon has usurped our right to think about the nuclear situation, but he is determined to reassert that right.
The nuclear freeze movement doesn’t come from the Kennedys, they’re latching onto it because it is such a big movement in the United States, and trying to derail it. Shouldn’t we expect this from Kennedy and the Democratic Party?
The question is, how do we vote on this question? It’s a tactical question. The majority of the California State Committee and Barry urge the adoption of a “not voting” position on the nuclear freeze referendum. My position is one of critical support, that is to vote “yes.” How do we influence the most people? I say we should be involved in this movement. We should influence and broaden people’s thinking on the U.S. war drive by being participants in the movement. Does it make a difference on how many people vote for the freeze? Barry in his report and other comrades say it would not make a difference if 30%, 50%, 70% or 80% vote for the freeze. The Cubans answer it does make a difference, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez at the UN stated,
If the United States government took a sensible course toward negotiations, it would begin by accepting the nuclear freeze proposed to it and which by itself could bring peace of mind for its content and its meaning to all the peoples demanding it. It would give satisfaction as well to the 72% of United States citizens who, according to the polls, said they were in favor of a freeze. [Emphasis added.]
How do we vote in the unions when endorsement of the nuclear freeze comes up? According to Barry’s position we will abstain. We will “not vote” in the unions on this question. We will say it’s irrelevant. I think it is very analogous to the discussions with Trotsky on the Ludlow Amendment.
The Ludlow Amendment was a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1935 by a Democratic Congressman named Ludlow. It was an amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that Congress would not have the authority to declare war until such a declaration had been approved by the people in a national referendum. Of course, this bill had many loop holes, one of which was that this limitation on the war-making power of Congress would not apply if the United States was attacked or invaded. Most of the CIO unions supported the Ludlow Amendment, while the Stalinists and the Roosevelt administration bitterly opposed it.
Trotsky had to help correct the political position of the National Committee on the SWP on this question because the National Committee took a sectarian abstentionist attitude toward the Ludlow Amendment. The NC at that time took the position that we should not vote on the Ludlow Amendment. And in the union movement when the Stalinists opposed the Ludlow Amendment and when the masses were for it, we should step aside and wait until we see which way the vote was going. If it’s going to be defeated, then we step in and vote for it. But only in that instance. Trotsky disagreed completely with the leadership of the SWP. He said that this was looking at things from the wrong approach. Trotsky explained,
I believe that we can say to the masses, we must say to them openly: Dear friends, our opinion is that we should establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, but you are not yet of our opinion. You believe you can keep America out of war by a referendum. What will you do? You say you do not have enough confidence in the President and the Congress elected by you and that you wish to check them through a referendum. Good, very good, we absolutely agree with you that you must learn to decide for yourselves. The referendum in this sense is a very good thing and we will support it. Ludlow proposes this amendment, but he will not fight for it. He does not belong to the 60 families, but he belongs to the 500 families. He launched this parliamentary slogan, but this is a very severe fight and can be conducted only by the workers, farmers and the masses—and we will fight with you, the people who propose these means are not willing to fight for it. We say this to you in advance.
Then we become by and by the champions of this fight. At every favorable occasion, we say: This is not sufficient; the magnates of the war industry have their connections, etc., etc.; we must check them also; we must establish workers’ control of war industry. But on the basis of this fight in the trade unions we become champions of the movement. We can say it’s almost a rule. We must advance with the masses, and not only repeat our formulas, but speak in a manner that our slogans become understandable to the masses.
And from the Transitional Program itself:
From this point of view, our American section, for example, critically supports the proposal for establishing a referendum on the question of declaring war. No democratic reform, it is understood, can, by itself, prevent the rulers from provoking war when they wish it. It is necessary to give frank warning of this, but notwithstanding the illusions of the masses in regard to the proposed referendum, their support of it reflects the distrust felt by the workers and the farmers toward the bourgeois government and Congress.
That’s exactly what motivates that person in Montana who is organizing the freeze referendum—he does not want the MX missile there in his home state. That’s exactly the sentiments of the masses who support the nuclear freeze.
The transitional program states,
Without supporting and without sparing illusions, it is necessary to support with all possible strength the progressive distrust of the exploited toward the exploiters. The more widespread the movement for the referendum becomes, the sooner will the bourgeois pacifists move away from it, the more completely will the betrayers of the Comintern be compromised, the more acute will the distrust of the imperialists become.
That’s what’s happening in the United States today. There’s a growing movement against the nuclear buildup and the imperialist wars.
In Larry’s [Seigle] letter on the Jobs and Peace referendum in Milwaukee, he states that the question of the referendum itself, the wording, “This is important because our approach to these measures can seldom be worked out simply by looking at the wording on the ballot....We are dealing in these cases, not with the abstract questions, but with an approach to intervening into a concrete debate and discussion in the context of political campaigns as they actually develop around these referendums.” Then he goes on to say, that there are some cases where we could support it. “Likewise, if a proposition with the identical wording were to become part of a campaign against war being waged by a resurgent fighting labor movement, we can certainly urge a vote for it.” The same dynamic applies to the nuclear freeze referendum in California. We can urge a vote for it. It’s critical support within the organization, within the whole movement, we say, yes, we’re going on to vote for this, but, we think that the movement should encompass a whole series of demands. A whole series of demands against the MX missile, Trident submarine, other nuclear weapons of the United States, against the United States’ war moves throughout the world on those questions, and also against the U.S. war moves against the working class in the United States. But most important, the fight cannot be won in a referendum. The fight can only be won in the streets. That’s the way we get involved in the movement. The party misses an opportunity to throw itself completely into the antiwar movement. I think there is an antiwar movement that exists today. I think it’s got to develop its own program, it’s got to think out how it’s going to intervene and lead the movement forward. It’s not going to be just a freeze referendum over here, it’s also going to be built in the streets of the United States. It’s already shown that it’s willing to go into the streets of the United States on May 3, 1981, on March 27, 1982, and now most significantly on June 12, 1982.
The Socialist Workers Party has got to lead this movement.
[Edited by reporter.]
It’s hard to follow such an excellent performance as Byron presented here. I was inspired by his sincerity and by the knowledge he brings to this discussion. The discussion which all of us are now involved in has important aspects that we should now begin to sort out. What is the so-called Nuclear Freeze referendum, specifically the one in California? And what is the movement in support of the referendum? This movement is different from the referendum, as Byron explained. What are we trying to accomplish in this movement?
These are not new elements. We’ve been working on this for a long time trying to sift them out, not only in the leadership bodies of the party, but in many of the branches where propositions of this kind appear on the ballot. Our discussion has been rather extensive. You have some of it in your kits. We’ve been engaged in this discussion now almost continuously since the February-March plenum. We’ve had two meetings of the full Political Committee here in New York, which devoted the major part of its attention to this problem, especially as it related to the preparations for June 12; and we have had voluminous correspondence between the branches and the center, and some discussions in the Political Bureau.
I want to call your attention to these facts because the material is in your kits, and you may want to return to the correspondence, minutes, and other records to refresh your memory about what actually has been going on and the nature of the discussion up to now. It’s far from completed. But in the very beginning of the discussion, Comrade Steve Bloom submitted a letter to the Political Committee on the Seattle ballot initiative, in which he tried to sort out exactly these concerns which we ought to have about this whole development. What is the referendum specifically? What is the movement in support of the referendum? And what are we trying to accomplish?
Nearing the end of the discussion within the Political Bureau, and approaching this plenum, a series of motions came before the body. That’s under point 7 in the Political Bureau Minutes No. 12, July 24, that you have in your kits. There’s a motion by Lovell that was made on May 19th, tabled at the time. This was voted on at our July 24 meeting. This motion says that we make clear our opposition to the California Bilateral Freeze proposition, and urge abstention on the vote, that is, not casting either a yes or a no vote. That motion was voted down by the majority in the Political Bureau.
Instead, the majority caucus voted for two motions, similar to what is presented here to you today to vote on: first, that we concur with the general line of the California State Executive Committee as presented by Barry Sheppard in his letter of July 22nd (which is the letter that was referred to by Byron), and secondly to concur in the position of “not voting,” as our voting stance in the referendum at this time.
It is difficult to distinguish between my motion to abstain and the majority’s “not voting” motion. Perhaps Barry will clarify that further in his summary. The other motion by the majority on general line is very different from my understanding of the antiwar movement at this time. I’ll try and explain our differences.
First, the way we vote on the nuclear freeze: how do we vote when we go into the voting booth? And what do we say to others who are thinking about casting a ballot? I know there are some comrades who think the wording of a proposition is not very important. Larry, in his recent letter (quoted by Bryon) to the comrades in Milwaukee, expressed this opinion. I think we ought to know what we’re voting on, especially if we want to discuss how to vote with others who may not know.
The California proposition is short and direct. You have a copy of it in your kits so I won’t read it. It’s only one paragraph. The key word is “urge.” We urge, we voters urge the government of the United States and the government of the Soviet Union, that both countries agree to immediately halt testing, production, further deployment of all nuclear weapons, and so on; and that also they provide ways of checking and verifying by both sides. Now this sounds pretty good to lots of people. If we were in power in either country, either in the Soviet Union or in the United States, I think we would support such a proposal. That’s what Joe Hansen was trying to explain: that is, if we were in power in the Soviet Union this would be a good political strategy for the government to adopt.
Well, we’re not in power.
These if—then arguments don’t have much applicability today. Reagan represents the United States government and U.S. imperialism. Brezhnev represents the Soviet bureaucracy. This proposition urges them, these two, to negotiate.
The Stalinists of course for their part are very much in favor of this, because they think it will lead to detente, or maybe SALT 2 or 3, or at least be a start in that direction. But we don’t think that either Reagan or his counterpart Brezhnev can represent the interest of working people; and we don’t think anything beneficial to workers anywhere in the world will result from such negotiations by these two scoundrels.
We are not opposed to negotiations either, whether initiated by U.S. imperialism or by the Soviet bureaucracy. But when it comes to urging such negotiations we abstain. We say working people in the United States and in the Soviet Union have more urgent problems. We can’t find anything beneficial in these kinds of negotiations; and we think we can find for ourselves a better way to force this government to stop producing nuclear bombs and cut back on its present stockpile. That’s our objective.
Now we come to the second part of this debate about the nuclear freeze in California: the antiwar movement, at its present stage. I think comrades in California were wise to separate what we do on the proposition, the ballot initiative, and what we do in relation to the movement. It’s the needs of the movement that we must pay attention to. This is what ought to guide us in our relation to, and participation in the antiwar movement in its present stage of development. What are the needs of this movement? This is a completely different matter from our refusal to support the bilateral nuclear disarmament proposal.
We must be clear on our opposition to it, I am convinced of that. If we fail in this then we are likely to follow others around and forget what we are supposed to be doing in the antiwar movement. But how we explain our positions is determined for us largely by the character of the movement in its present stage of development. I believe there are more differences of opinion about this among us here than has yet been expressed, especially as expressed by Barry in his July 22nd letter to the Bureau.
Our view of the combined antiwar-antinukes movement changed some, maybe more than I’m aware of, as a result of the June 12th demonstration.
I don’t know what your experiences were, but those of you who were in San Francisco or Los Angeles or Seattle or Denver or New York certainly must realize now that there never was a demonstration like this before in this country. That was the immediate response of our comrades in New York, the comrades working on the Militant and the comrades in the Political Bureau and in the Political Committee which met after this to discuss the meaning of these demonstrations. They came as a complete surprise to most of us. I remember asking many comrades who were working in the movement, trying to get active in the building of it, how it is going to turn out. How many people will be there? What will be the character of it?
They all said, Frank, we can’t tell.
I don’t think anybody could tell, including the organizers of that demonstration. It was a complete surprise, it really was different.
If you were there you know. Our comrades who were there in the streets selling Militants brought back the most enthusiastic stories that I have ever heard from any participation in an action of this kind, anywhere, at any time. What did it mean? What did it really mean?
I think it showed the extent of the radicalization in this country. The whole character of the crowd was completely friendly, as far as anybody could determine. I’m not saying there weren’t a few unfriendly people there, but it didn’t show up anywhere at our literature stands. Everybody, regardless of what his or her opinion was or why they were there, was friendly to our comrades. The vast majority certainly had very little agreement with our general political line.
It seems that anybody who had a gripe or grievance of any sort was there with a banner to display it. It was called as an antiwar demonstration, that’s true. And everybody who was there seemed to be in general against war. But it was more than that. I believe it was largely anti-Reagan.
If you just take it in its entirety, the demands were multiple. But certainly one of the most common and the most popular demands of all, was “Jobs, Not War.” That was a demand that everybody seemed able to agree upon. There’s only one demand that nobody reported seeing. That was the demand for unilateral disarmament.
I didn’t think that banner was raised anywhere by anyone, and it’s not surprising. Byron mentioned here that some comrades in California had that notion, that you could go to one of these coalitions and urge them to come out with a big sign saying “unilateral disarmament.” It is hard to believe that anybody had that idea.
There was this one demand, however, that has this concept implicit in it. It’s a very popular demand. The one I just mentioned: Jobs, Not War. That really means in popular terms, unilateral disarmament, I believe.
Now, what does this tell us about how we must relate to the movement. First of all, as Byron says, we’ve got to get into it. We’ve got to become part of it. But how do we do that? I don’t think this movement in California or anywhere else is primarily centered around the ballot initiative this year. I don’t believe that.
Of course, as the election approaches, and this proposal is more commonly discussed, interest in the ballot initiative naturally increases. But the initiative will be over in November. The antiwar movement certainly will continue. Let’s look back now, and see what we could have done. Hindsight is useful sometimes. It’s always easier to review the part than foresee the future. What could we have done in this situation?
A lot of questions came up during the course of the discussions. What do we say to a petitioner who’s out trying to get this proposition on the ballot? They had a big debate up in Seattle, what do you say? Well, what’s the most natural thing to say? Of course I’ll sign your petition, I’m in favor of the voters having the right to vote on nuclear freeze, whether bilateral or unilateral. That’s not my concern at this point. I want to help you get this proposition on the ballot. Then the petitioner says will you vote for it. I don’t know. I haven’t studied it yet, but I’ll meet you in a week or two and I’ll let you know. And you study the proposition and you come back and say I’m not going to vote for it. Because I don’t believe in urging Brezhnev and company or the Reagan gang or any of these people to negotiate in my interests. I don’t delegate any authority to them, and I don’t think the working people of this country or any other country should.
So what then do you do?
Can you help us any in this movement? We want to have some big demonstrations. Yes, of course, that’s what we want to do too. We think that’s what’s necessary to be done.
We think that if working people are going to have any effect here then they’ve got to participate in actions of the very kind you’re suggesting, and we’ll be there with you. Every day. Now, what do we do when we join these coalitions? Do we hang around the fringes of the movement and listen and see who’s in favor of unilateral disarmament, who’s in favor of bilateral disarmament...and then make a choice. That’s not participation at all.
No, the thing we’ve got to do is participate. And when you go into any kind of coalition, you have to go in with what you represent, what you think should be done, and try to bring the others along with you.
In the coalitions of the kind that have developed, and the kind of demonstrations that have ensued, I think we would go and propose some slogans. “Out of El Salvador,” everybody agrees with that pretty much in these coalitions; “Hands Off Central America,” “No More Nukes,” [laughter]. Did I make a mistake? Isn’t it the truth? I thought so, from seeing the demonstration in New York.
“Jobs, Not War.” Don’t you think that would be a good thing for us to say? These are slogans, they’re only slogans. But in our proposal for agitation, we can begin to concretize them.
Now, Barry gets his feet mixed up I think, especially in his letter of July 22nd which I have to go by, and some of the content of which he repeated here in his remarks. He tells us first, that in the June 12th coalition we saw attempts to quash opposition to imperialism’s real wars in the name of support of the bilateral freeze proposal. Maybe he saw that in the coalition in California. But we saw nothing like that in the massive actions that were organized by these coalitions. Nothing of the sort appeared anywhere in any of the big demonstrations that we watched and participated in where we sold our literature as never before.
Then Barry tells us, that as things stand now a “yes” vote would not represent a setback for the working class.
I don’t know how anybody could have the idea that a vote for the nuclear freeze would mark a setback for the working class. Of course it would not, any more than a big anti-Reagan vote for the Democratic Party, if you will, will mark a big setback for the class.
It won’t mark any advance either, and that’s the problem for us.
Finally, Barry seems to be worried, as he repeated here today, that the organizers of the bilateral freeze referendum and the Democratic Party will succeed by November in turning this campaign into a pro-Democratic Party, anti-Soviet Union campaign. For sure, the Democratic Party will benefit from this campaign. Does anybody doubt that for a single minute? As a matter of fact this is one of the purposes of the campaign on the part of the organizers of it. But if we learned anything from June 12th, it certainly must be that this radicalizing working class will not be easily turned into an anti-Soviet flanking attack, or into an organized opposition to the Soviet Union. It will not travel in an anti-Soviet direction at this juncture.
The present antiwar movement, at its present level of development, is still rather amorphous. But as far as we are able to learn, it has absolutely no anti-Soviet overtones to it. Nobody has demonstrated that; and there’s no literature to back it up. We will regain our balance when we turn our attention to serious work in this antiwar movement as it now exists. Not as we hope it will become and not as we think it should have been, just as it exists right now. We are bound to learn more about it and that will help us too. I think the way to work in this movement, as in other mass movements, is to go into these organizations and coalitions with our own proposals and suggestions independent and different from the ballot initiatives.
We can do this effectively once we are clear on our own position, that we don’t get sucked into any bilateral disarmament proposals, nuclear or otherwise. We don’t fall into that trap. These ballot initiatives are not our game. We should try and steer clear of them. This means finding ways to work in these coalitions by making more concrete the slogans we are agreed upon, such as Jobs, Not War, and by avoiding a big fight to split these coalitions over the nuclear freeze issue. This is something we leave aside, to the extent that it’s possible.
We think that the best way to concretize the Jobs, Not War slogan and other slogans of this kind, is to propose a massive public works program to be financed with money that is now being spent to set off underground nuclear blasts, as happened last week, and to build more bombs.
That ought to attract some union support, especially now that the blue collar unemployment rate has reached 14.5 percent.
If we approach the movement this way, it would help build the nuclear disarmament movement by attracting union support of which there is a considerable amount right now, as was demonstrated on June 12th. It will destroy some illusions in the Democratic Party too, I believe, because the Democratic Party, however much it talks about a public works program to rebuild the infrastructure of the industrial machine of this country, will do nothing to further that aim. That is really the task of the union movement in this country. And it can help too, this approach, in our own election campaigns if properly used by the SWP candidates.
So I propose now that we continue this discussion, and that our campaign initiatives, our candidates who are deeply involved in the campaign try something along the lines suggested here, so that we may begin to acquire a little more experience than we have up to now and see if when we come back after the elections we have different opinions and different ideas and a little bit better understanding of what these ballot initiatives amount to and how we can take advantage of them.
Byron’s [Ackerman] main argument in his report this morning essentially boils down to the idea that a freeze would be a good thing for the world, for humanity, for the American people, etc. But it seems to me there’s a fatal flaw in that line of reasoning, that is, that we are not going to get a freeze by voting for this referendum.
I think we can all agree—I hope we can all agree—that it would certainly be a good thing for all humanity if production of these weapons were stopped immediately, rolled back. This has been our traditional view. But the way to do this is not to give the U.S. government an out, the Democratic Party an out, to do some form of bilateral negotiation which, historically, is just a way for them to evade these kinds of things. I think we can explain this to people.
I think we can explain unilateralism to people, not in an abstract way of raising unilateral disarmament to the United States. Then people look at you like you’re a little crazy. But there are things that people can agree with, even on this freeze thing, if we just counterpose the unilateral to a bilateral freeze. We can immediately make the point: this government, which has no need for these weapons and no business making them—they’re not for the defense of the United States—should stop making these weapons.
This refers to the whole bloated military budget, including all kinds of other programs that aren’t directly related to nuclear weapons. And this is where the “Jobs Not War” and the “Social Services, Not War” demands come in, and are essential. As Frank [Lovell] pointed out in his comments, these are demands for unilateral disarmament—not complete disarmament, but partial disarmament—to end these programs by the United States without any conditions on what other governments should do.
And we have to insist on the need to take up Central America and the other real war threats, both within the antinuclear movement—the June 12-type demonstrations—and any kind of antiwar coalitions. But the big problem for us remains how to do this, how to introduce these ideas? What is our approach in doing this?
By the way, we also have another slogan and this is one of the points that Harry [Ring] was raising which is also part of our program, and that’s “No Nukes.” We should not give this “No Nukes” slogan over to the liberals, the Democratic Party, or anybody else. That’s our slogan. We stand for that, and it’s quite an important thing in reaching out to the American people.
But specifically on the question of the freeze, as well as our general approach to the antinuclear movement and the Central America question. Again I would agree with Harry on this, although I think it’s more than just by fighting against the wars in Central America that we fight against nuclear weapons. That’s true, but there’s another side to it. It is a genuine fight against the war budget and against the production of nuclear weapons by this government. We should not counterpose these things. Even to the freeze. This is the key here.
Given the mass sentiment which exists around this in California, and in other places where these referenda exist, we should not put ourselves in the position of counterposing what we want to do to what these people think they’re doing. We should explain to them that they’re not doing what they think they’re doing. But we should not make it a precondition on them that they give up what they’re doing to work with us on what we think has to be done.
Barry [Sheppard] said in his report that the main thing we have to explain to people is that imperialism is going to war right now, that people should get out of this nuclear freeze campaign, and into the movement against El Salvador. Now, in the abstract I think that would certainly be a good thing. People are wasting their time in this nuclear freeze referenda movement, and we understand this. I think that taking this attitude explicitly, however, gets in the way of a serious approach to the thousands of activists who are involved in this, who we want to talk to, and who we want to involve in real antiwar and antinuclear activity. I would call it a movement by the way. If you comrades don’t want to call that a movement, if you want to call it something else, that’s fine; but there’s still a lot of people out there that we want to talk to.
So what should our approach be? We go to people and we say, “Look, you think you’re doing something to solve the problem of war, to end nuclear weapons. We think you’re sadly mistaken about this; but if you want to do this, you’re not really doing anything terrible. The vote’s obviously going to reflect antiwar sentiment, but you’re obviously not going to do much good, and there are a lot of other things we ought to be doing—together. You should work with us on them.”
And we raise the questions around the war in Central America. Real action campaigns, things that we can explain to them that they should actually be involved in. We can’t raise this just as an abstraction. It has to be concrete, and it has to be specific.
We say as far as the antinuclear thing, “Look, at least if you’re doing this, we should also make some specific demands on our government. That it should stop producing these weapons. Not let them off the hook by this bilateral business.”
We have to have real perspectives and real proposals that we can raise with people, not simply denunciations of bilateralism or of the misleaderships that are latching onto these movements.
So, I don’t think we can have a serious discussion of our attitude toward this referendum in California abstracted from our general relationship to the masses who are attracted to it, and to what I would call the developing antiwar movement in this country.
We didn’t get very much of that in Barry’s report, which I think is unfortunate. Essentially we got a textual analysis of the referendum itself. In general I would agree with comrades who are critical of the lack of our attention by the party to this area of how we actually participate, intervene, and give leadership to this movement. The feeling that we could be more involved.
Harry raises just as an aside the question of the Third World and Progressive Peoples Coalition. Again, there’s no objection to this. I think the work we did there was very good. The problem is, in my opinion, it wasn’t sufficient. There are other kinds of things that we also ought to be doing and participating in.
I don’t want to quibble over terminology on how we word motions or votes, whether it’s not voting or abstention. Comrades are creating some new meanings for the word “abstention,” different from what we’ve used in the past. I would agree with the substance of the political attitude toward the referendum, itself, and our voting posture as encompassed in the “Not Voting” position. I don’t think there’s a big problem there. And I completely disagree with Ackerman’s motions and Weinstein on this. But I don’t want to personally approve the general political analysis or, more correctly, lack of political analysis that was in Barry’s report. I don’t remember if Barry stated explicitly what motions they were going to propose. I would just request a separation of a vote on the question of our voting posture in California and the motion to approve his report.
I want to begin by making two motions. The first is to move the adoption of Byron’s [Ackerman] report; and second, I move that the National Committee recommend to the California State Committee that it reconsider its position and urges critical support to the nuclear freeze initiative on the November 1982 ballot.
Byron gave a very complete report and my remarks will be very brief, supplementary remarks. I don’t think that the bourgeoisie are sectarians. Their whole history indicates that they don’t turn their backs on movements and turn them over to opponents. The unions are the main instruments of the workers struggle that exist in the United States today; and the ruling class puts an extraordinary effort on intervening in them even though they are institutions of the working class. The fact is that they have won over the whole leadership of the union movement for supporters of the Democratic Party and the policies of the capitalist class. Yet we intervene, I should hope, in the union movement. We intervene in the union movement despite the fact that the whole leadership of the union movement are Democrats pointing the movement away from class struggle methods to defend its interests.
Our object in the union movement is to point it towards the utilization of class struggle methods in order to defend its interests in opposition to the union leaderships that are the agency of the capitalist class within the unions.
I think the same thing applies to the problem that is before us today, to the tactical problem of the antinuclear movement. The antinuclear movement is largely in the hands of pro-Democrats who are trying to deflect this movement into safe channels, into class-collaborationism, into supporting Democrats in the elections. We are opposed to that.
Now, we could just turn our backs like SLPers and say that we can’t participate in it because it’s a class collaborationist movement. No. I say we should go into the movement, advance our class struggle program, and participate in the movement in order to turn it in an effective direction against imperialist war. The question of how we vote is subordinate to this. It’s a tactical question. If it aids us in making these points to those people in the movement and if it puts us in a position of saying, “Yes, ok, you think this is a good step to take,” then we say it has a positive side.
I say that a vote for the nuclear freeze will be anticapitalist. That’s what I think. And I say, “Ok that’s good, but you’re not going to win that way.” The only way you are going to win is to take the warmaking power out of the hands of those in Washington, that’s the capitalists in Washington. Ultimately what that leads to is the socialist revolution. That’s the only way you’re going to end war. That should be our way of intervening in this movement. I think it’s sensible, it’s practical, and it’s completely principled.
Now, Larry Seigle, in that same letter to the Milwaukee branch, expresses a correct idea that it’s a tactical question. On the other hand there is another argument in there that goes in the opposite direction and is entirely contradictory to the idea that this is a tactical question, how you vote on these initiatives. So that given the concrete circumstances, you can vote yes, no, or in between.
He takes another position by contrasting this movement and the sentiments in this movement to a vote for a Black Democrat which can be read as antiracist, which it would be. He says that doesn’t mean that you can vote for a Black Democrat. That’s absolutely correct. But that’s an attempt to draw an equal sign between voting for a Black Democrat, which means giving political support to the capitalist class through the agency of the Democratic Party, and an initiative. An initiative is not the same thing as voting for the Democratic Party. That’s the fallacy in the position.
There are a lot of fake arguments that have been introduced in this discussion. And it has a very bad side to it that is utilized to cast a poisonous atmosphere over this whole discussion. That is to raise the whole question of nuclear weapons to Angola, the IRA, and the PLO. And then if you’re against that you are by implication in favor of the opponents of this movement having nuclear weapons, but you’re not for these oppressed peoples having the atomic bomb. That’s a fake argument. That’s not the question before us as Byron eloquently demonstrated. What flows from that position? What does it mean to say that Angola, or the IRA, or the PLO had the bomb, as Barry [Sheppard] has stated in the branch. Or as Larry Seigle stated in the IEC meeting, in the case of Angola, that it was good? What flows from that?
We’re not just for good things. We have a program of action. You know what flows from that? Organize a demonstration to give the PLO the bomb, or Angola the bomb, or the IRA the bomb. Where would you go to demand that they give Angola, IRA, and the PLO the bomb? To the American embassy? To Washington? That’s absurd.
Or would you go to the Soviet embassy and demand that they give these forces the bomb? You know what’s so absurd about that? It’s worse than absurd. It’s a cover for the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, because where it leads to is pointing your finger at them for not providing them with the bomb, rather than organizing a political struggle for the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale.
I think the point that Harry [Ring] makes gets to the heart of the question: What is our attitude toward the anti-nuclear movement in the United States? I think the party is unclear about that. I think the party is unclear about that. I think that’s why we do counterpose the U.S. out of Central America fight to the anti-nuclear movement. That’s one of the rationalizations for not getting into the movement. As an example, there were two votes in the San Francisco coalition. One was an amendment to the main leaflet for the June 12th demonstration to put El Salvador on this leaflet. That vote lost something like 30-17. On the other hand, a motion was introduced by CISPES to put out a separate coalition leaflet on El Salvador and Washington’s nuclear threat. That won by 30-17. Which forces do we block with? What are the forces that we want to get involved with? Are we trying to “split the coalition” with the 17 votes on the main leaflet or the 30 who voted for the CISPES leaflet? Or are we trying to help further educate on the interrelation of the nuclear buildup and the war in Central America while building the movement? Pedro Vasquez’s statement that it was us who fought for the PLO speaker to be there is inaccurate. No, the PLO speaker was invited by the June 12 coalition. The coalition’s leader defended the PLO’s right to be on the stage. It was published in the San Francisco Chronicle in response to a Democratic Party member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who tried to veto the PLO speaker. We constantly got in a battle about this—the question of the real wars. Which real wars? Malik Miah mentioned in his Oberlin report eight real wars going on in the world today. Which one or ones do you pick to raise as demands of the coalition? Demanding the coalition must accept them, otherwise the SWP will not participate. Which wars should we raise? The question came up in the northern California antiwar fraction discussion, should we push for having the Malvinas war be the main focus because that was the central war right then? Or do we get involved and educate as we’re participating in the movement around these questions. And in no case is it necessary to downplay the question of nuclear war. The question is with which forces can we ally ourselves and which not? Do people have to agree with our entire program before they can get involved with a bloc with us?
What about unilateral disarmament? Do comrades propose raising this as an agitational slogan? It that correct? Comrades going out of this plenum today will not know what the party position is. The Third World People’s Coalition took “unilateral disarmament” as their main agitational slogan on the leaflet that appeared in the Militant. The TWPC slogan of unilateral disarmament outweighed the slogan of U.S. out of El Salvador.
What should be the dividing line in this movement? I agree that it is an antiwar movement just emerging and therefore we have a lot of education to do. Our three central slogans for the movement should be 1) no nuclear weapons, no MX missiles, no Trident submarines, etc.; 2) U.S. out of Central America, U.S. hands off El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba; and 3) jobs not war, spend money for social services, not the military budget.
I agree with Geoff [Mirelowitz] who said that the radicalization of the working class is increasing dynamically. Where was the SWP in involving the trade unions in contingents in the June 12th demonstration? We had a fight in the party about the trade union involvement in June 12th in the Bay area. Some of the leading comrades opposed “no nuclear weapons, U.S. out of Central America and Stop the Transportation of Hazardous Wastes,” for the rail contingent. They insisted we focus on unilateral disarmament instead. How do you mobilize the working class? Was it good to have the working class participate in union contingents on June 12? That’s still a question. The party must be clear. I think we should go into the trade unions and organize committees around El Salvador, around nuclear weapons, around the jobs crisis and against the war, around the MX missile maybe in Salt Lake City. We should get the union movement involved in the campaigns like the one to shut down Rocky Flats in Colorado. We should have a program for the entire party with which to go into the trade unions. That’s not projected. That should be projected. Barry and the party leadership should tell us where they stand on this.
Does voting on the freeze referendum involve a principled question? Andrew Pulley said it was a class question. Well, if this referendum is a class question, then you’ve got to vote “no.” If you believe this, you’ve got to tell people it’s a trick. You have to go out and tell people to vote no! That’s the logic of the position the comrades take.
Now are all these referendums sucker tricks? No, we support referenda, sometimes they come out of the movement. The United Farmworkers collected 700,000 signatures and got a referendum on the California ballot in 1976. The UFW tried to get it passed through the Democratic-controlled state legislature. It didn’t get passed, so the farmworkers got a petition and they got it on the ballot. What was one of the points the initiative called for? A five-member board, two from the union, two from business and one a “public” person. You know who the “public” is, that’s big business. It’s a classic “tripartite” class collaborationist board, but we gave support to that initiative. We urged a “yes” vote for the initiative. Despite the formal class collaborationist formula for resolving labor disputes, the initiative had to be seen in the context of a real struggle of the farmworkers in California. A victory for the initiative would objectively aid the farmworkers. It would be understood less for its literal content and more for the fact of political solidarity a large yes vote would bring to bear on the side of the farmworkers. We also criticized the idea of an impartial tri-partite board, but that was not the decisive question. We explained that independent class mobilization and methods of struggle would be decisive. This is the same way we should go into this fight on the nuclear freeze.
The decisive question is not how to vote on this freeze referendum. We agree that people should vote “yes” for the nuclear freeze but we do not stop there. The most important issue is getting people out in the streets, building a movement against the imperialist war, both the U.S. nuclear buildup and the U.S. intervention in the antiwar movement. If giving critical support to the California freeze initiative will help us win people over to this class struggle approach, and I’m convinced it will, then that is the correct position to take. That should be the foremost task of the Socialist Workers Party.
I think probably we’ve moved ahead a little bit in this discussion. It was disappointing to me that there weren’t more reports from our experience in this work. But I think maybe one of the reasons for that is that we really didn’t have much experience, except as observers, in my case and maybe in the case of most others. I’ll come back to that in a while. First I want to mention the vote question—how do we vote?
As I tried to explain, I’m for abstention.
Barry will probably explain the difference between abstention and “no vote” in his summary. I can’t understand any real difference there, unless you have a kind of esoteric language which only we here who’ve had it explained to us can understand.
Comrade Pedro Vasquez began to explain the substantial difference that exists. He says that we’re not abstentionists like mummies, or people who just don’t do anything. We want to participate. We want to get out there and explain to all the people in this movement why it is that we’re for a “no vote.”
This doesn’t mean that we should vote against the proposition, just “no vote.” Pedro’s line of reasoning assumes that this proposition is the central focus of our activity.
I don’t believe that at all.
That’s why I think we should abstain on the vote. We’ve got other matters that are of much greater importance than this proposition. I don’t care how the voters cast their ballots. I’m interested in other matters. In that sense I agree completely with Thabo [Ntweng] who says this really is not our game at all. This is a skin game, a sucker’s game. That’s what it is. It is similar in this respect to the vote for the Democrats and the Republicans. I have never been drawn into any kind of debate whether it’s better for a Democrat or a Republican to be elected. I don’t care. That’s not my concern.
After each election we analyze the vote. We try to explain what it means for the working class, for the future of the working class. But what we’re really talking about, as we always explain, is bourgeois politics.
After the last election, when Reagan became president, we said the bourgeoisie had moved substantially to the right. That’s true. It was a blow to the working class because the working class was defenseless in face of the offensive of the employing class. The employers now organized their attacks more directly through the government, in addition to the ways they had been organizing their anti-union drive prior to the election.
These are important questions for us to talk about, but we can’t take sides in bourgeois politics. We have our own politics, working class politics, and in the electoral field we represent the interests of the working class. We participate in elections through our own working class representatives, usually through our own party.
We are for independent working-class political action. We try and get the labor movement to organize a labor party, so that the working class will have a greater voice in the electoral arena. That’s all.
Much of what we do depends, of course, on the stage of radicalization of different sectors of society, especially the working class. Comrade Mirelowitz mentioned this. He says maybe Comrade Lovell doesn’t understand the stage of radicalization today. Maybe Mirelowitz does. He didn’t say.
How will you measure this? How are you going to know what the stage of radicalization is?
I think we do have a barometer for judging the stage of radicalization at this time. I think June 12th should have taught us something about the stage of radicalization. That’s one interesting and useful barometer, if you look at what forces were assembled there.
I also believe that a big vote for the freeze would be an indication of deepening radicalization. That’s nothing that we can control. We can’t determine the outcome. We would be foolish to go out and beat the drums to try to influence this barometer. But if millions of people vote for the freeze in the 20 states, whatever it is on the ballot, that would indicate a deepening radicalization, I think. Don’t you agree?
If you should try and influence that vote it would be like going out in the summertime to put a piece of ice under the thermometer, to see if you could make the weather cooler.
It’s not our business at all to try and influence the outcome of those kinds of votes. We try to analyze the vote to understand the stage of radicalization, shifts in the mass mood, or other political changes. We try to take advantage of these changes to help the working class in the achievement of its goals.
I also think the state of the unions is another good barometer for judging the degree of radicalization in this country. Whether you believe it or not today, there are big changes taking place in the union movement. Comrades who listened carefully to the reports at some of our fraction meetings will testify to this. I didn’t get a chance to listen to all of them, but I attended the auto fraction meeting, and the rail fraction meeting. In both of them what the comrades were saying indicated to me a very big change in the consciousness of workers and in the degree and extent of radicalization in this country. One comrade in the auto fraction reported that she’s a candidate on our party ticket for public office. Two years ago, another comrade in the same plant ran for public office. Two years ago that comrade’s tires were slashed in the parking lot. The comrade today who is running for public office says those same workers, in some instances the same individuals, are supportive of her campaign, are friendly with her, and want to do what they can to help her. I submit that this represents a very big change in consciousness. You may say this is one example in one plant, but there are other reports of this kind. It is important for us to take note of these reports.
Another barometer of the present stage of radicalization, is the condition of our party and the growth of our party. Are we attracting workers to our party, or are we not? We certainly should be, if the other indicators are accurate. That’s what I mean when I talk about judging the present stage of radicalization.
Now I come to the point about El Salvador and all the back door stuff that went on. Comrades, I know, we had all kinds of problems with these so-called leaders of the third world groups. They don’t like us. They don’t like the SWP. And we had greater problems with others who don’t like them. But our main trouble is that we could not bring any forces into that development, into that unfolding process leading up to June 12th.
But what did you see on June 12th?
There were more third world people there, there were more Puerto Ricans, there were more Blacks, there were more union members present at the June 12th demonstration than any other demonstration that has occurred before in this country.
What do you think of that? How do you explain that?
That has to do with the degree of radicalization of these people. Not only third world people, but the whole spectrum of the labor movement.
In San Francisco, the demonstration was led by the union movement, unlike in New York. But in New York there were more workers, more union members there than at any previous demonstration. And even the union contingents were larger than any you had ever seen before.
There is, obviously, a broad anti-war/anti-nukes sentiment in this country. And there is a developing anti-war movement. Our task is to learn how to relate to the sentiment, and how to help build the movement.
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