The Militant - June 30, 2003 -- 2004 campaign well under way

Vol. 67/No. 22 June 30, 2003

2004 campaign well under way

The 2004 presidential election campaign is well under way. The arguments by Democratic politicians and their supporters against the Republican White House, on everything from Washington’s war drive in the Mideast to how to deal with the accelerating economic crisis, have been marked by partisan electioneering. These twin parties of the U.S. employers share the same basic foreign and, increasingly, domestic policies, designed to protect the interests of the ruling class of billionaire families. Their policies are fueled by the 30-year-long decline of the capitalist system that is now sliding into a worldwide depression. It is in response to these economic pressures that the U.S. rulers—like their counterparts in Britain, France, Japan, and other imperialist countries—are being driven to intensify their attacks on the wages and social gains of workers and farmers at home, while marching toward military assaults in the Mideast and elsewhere as they compete ruthlessly with their imperialist rivals abroad to redivide the world’s markets and territories.

The U.S. government scored gains through its relatively easy conquest of Iraq and is now stepping up its military pressures against Iran and north Korea. But while the “loyal opposition” in Congress has backed the strategic course of its government, squabbling only over tactics, liberal Democrats anticipate a rough road ahead for Washington in the not-so-distant future, and are increasingly certain that their moment is coming to stand at the helm of U.S. imperialism and “save America.” As the unfolding depression gives way to an inevitable credit crunch, mass layoffs, and a wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures, these liberal politicians will get wind in their sails.

Today these liberal forces are becoming energized around their efforts to get a Democrat into the White House in 2004. Middle-class radicals who back them seek to rally support around a “Dump Bush” front. As usual, they justify support to the Democrats as a “lesser evil” to the Republicans. In face of the accelerating economic and political turmoil in the world, their tone has become more shrill, as they falsely portray the Bush administration as “fascist” and Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al., as a “clique” that is somehow imposing its will on the U.S. government. In the name of “stopping Bush” and supporting the Democrats, for example, it appears the Green Party will not field a candidate. No political party in the workers movement has publicly said it will run a presidential candidate in 2004 except the Socialist Workers Party.

The hunt for some “progressive” wing of the capitalist class is used to promote the false idea that a “better” form of imperialism, a reformed or gentler capitalism, is possible. This argument is always used by capitalist politicians and their lieutenants in the labor movement to tell workers to put off their struggles, to ask farmers to suspend their fight for land, to argue that oppressed nationalities should postpone their fight for national liberation.

The two-party system, however, is how the U.S. billionaires maintain their political dominance. For instance, many of the key aspects of the employers’ assault on working people under the Bush administration were put in place by the Democratic Clinton-Gore White House, from the expansion of the federal police to the doubling of the prison population, the stiffening of anti-immigrant and “antiterrorist” legislation, the establishment of “homeland defense” to police working people at home, and military attacks on Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other nations.

The acceleration of the class struggle internationally has now begun to pose the central political questions facing humanity, because Washington has included revolutionary Cuba in its “axis of evil” political offensive. But Cuba is not Iraq. The imperialists confront a formidable obstacle in Cuba because in that country working people overthrew capitalist rule and have a revolutionary leadership. The debate around Cuba touches all those around the world who consider themselves communists and those who look to Cuba’s revolutionary leadership as a living voice of the socialist perspective. This has opened up the great political debate that will be at the heart of world politics for a long time: who will rule society and how, what kind of political party is needed to lead a social transformation—the question of socialist revolution and working-class leadership. The Cuban Revolution, fascism, imperialist war—the debates on these issues open up the possibility to take up the crucial questions of the history of the workers movement. Lessons from the past—from the October revolution in Russia to the Spanish Civil War—suddenly seem more relevant.

Joining these issues, the Socialist Workers Party will use the upcoming elections to offer a working-class voice and a revolutionary perspective. The socialist candidates point to the ongoing resistance of working people against the employer assault as they join in, reaching out broadly to fellow workers, youth, and others attracted to this perspective. In face of capitalism’s economic catastrophe, socialists put forward a program in the interests of working people. This program includes key demands such as a sliding scale of hours and wages to create jobs for all and protect workers from the ravages of unemployment and inflation. It calls for defending affirmative action and canceling the Third World debt.

Socialists seek to provide a scientific explanation of how capitalism works, which is at the heart of the systematic, patient work necessary to present a clear revolutionary perspective. The Socialist Workers candidates will be involving young socialists in broad street campaigning, in working-class struggles and other political activities, and in reading and studying Marxism.

Well before the next U.S. presidential election, we urge you to join socialist workers in campaigning for the socialist alternative in this year’s races and in 2004.

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