Politicians from around the country are campaigning in California. U.S. senators John McCain, a Republican, and John Kerry, a Democrat, were both here last week. Major dailies and weeklies in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere are running articles and opinion pieces on the November 8 vote.

Schwarzenegger announced the special election in June, a year before his term is up, aiming to push through a package of referenda. These include propositions to boost the governor’s executive power to limit funding for education and other programs, and to void public employee contracts in order to cut wages and benefits. Another measure increases intervention by the state into the unions.

At a statewide conference here October 15-16, supporters of the Socialist Workers Party ticket in California decided to wage an all-out effort the last three weeks before the vote to join other working people in campaigning to defeat the anti-working-class ballot initiatives and to explain the party’s program to advance the interests of working people in the United States and around the world.

The SWP is running five candidates in local California races: in Los Angeles, Diana Newberry for City Council District 14 and Seth Dellinger for City Council District 10; and in San Francisco, Romina Green for City Treasurer, Laura Anderson for City Attorney, and Gerardo Sánchez for Assessor-Recorder.  
 
New political situation
The initiatives are at the heart of the governor’s “reform agenda.” Schwarzenegger has had a tough time pushing it through the state legislature in face of protests by nurses, hospital employees, and other working people—those he targeted as “special interests” during his 2003 election campaign, and who he more and more overtly singles out as unionists today. “All I can tell you is that we cannot continue on the way it has been where everyone is intimidated by the unions,” Schwarzenegger said recently. “The legislators are frozen.”

In face of mounting street protests by several trade unions this spring, the governor pulled back from placing on the ballot an initiative to privatize pensions of public employees. The California Nurses Association has organized sustained protests against Schwarzenegger’s attempt to roll back a state law setting a 5-to-1 patient-to-nurse ratio, forcing him to shelve the plan for now. The greater the governor’s demagogy about “kicking the butts” of the nurses, teachers, and other working people opposing his plans, the more popular their protests have become among workers, farmers, youth, and layers of the middle classes.

This resistance is a registration of a new situation in politics in the United States and other industrially developed capitalist countries. Independent truckers at ports across the East Coast organizing to win union protection as Teamsters; coal miners in Utah fighting to win recognition as a local of the United Mine Workers; airline mechanics resisting union-busting by Northwest; Machinists who pushed back Boeing’s efforts to cut pension and health benefits; working people who organized to assist each other in face of the capitalist-caused social catastrophe in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast—these are examples of this political shift.

Working people such as these, as well as youth attracted to their struggles, are increasingly open to working-class political explanations of why the bipartisan war party in this country—the great majority of both Democratic and Republican officeholders—continue to expand military operations and preparations for new conflicts abroad, as they simultaneously escalate assaults on workers, farmers, and the labor movement at home.

“Given the changes in politics today,” said SWP city council candidate Diana Newberry, “we can gain a wider hearing for working-class demands that our class, our unions, our allies among farmers, and young people need to organize and fight to win—on strike picket lines, union-organizing drives, and street protests and demonstrations.

“More and more workers and farmers will begin recognizing that we can change the economic, social, and political conditions under which we work and live,” the SWP candidate said. “And that in the process we can transform ourselves. That’s what a fighting union movement can and will begin to change.”

One measure of this shift is the receptivity among workers to the Militant. Among other questions discussed at the California meeting was a proposal to increase the socialist newsweekly’s international subscription goal from 1,500 to 3,000 (see article on front page). A few days later the Los Angeles and San Francisco branches of the SWP voted to increase their goals, respectively, to 185 and 95 subscriptions this fall.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve doubled our goal right in the midst of a subscription drive,” pointed out Harry Ring, an SWP campaign supporter in Los Angeles and a more than 60-year veteran of the socialist movement. The meeting needs to take note of what this reflects about politics and the party’s work, he said.  
 
Schwarzenegger’s ‘reform agenda’
The star of The Terminator and other Hollywood action movies became governor two years ago through another special election, when Democratic Party governor Gray Davis was recalled. Since then Schwarzenegger has sought to ride the momentum of that electoral victory to accelerate the employers’ offensive already unfolding during Davis’s shortlived administration and that of prior Democratic and Republican governors.

Recent articles in the big-business press have questioned “the gubernator’s” ability to succeed in passing the measures he is campaigning for.

“The governor’s ambitious reform agenda is in peril with three months to go before a November special election and he’s taking hits from all sides,” said an article in the August 1 Wall Street Journal. But the daily’s editors counseled the governor to persist.

“As perilous as his political situation looks, Mr. Schwarzenegger overcame much longer odds in pulling off his 2003 recall victory by appealing directly to the people,” the Journal said. “And the battle is worth having. Even if he lost one or more of the initiatives on the ballot this November it wouldn’t be as damaging as losing the belief his core voters have that he is a strong leader.”

Schwarzenegger and his backers are banking on a relatively low turnout in a year with no major federal or state offices on the ballot. The very character of the special election—a plebiscite supposedly putting issues “directly in the hands of the people”—actually increases the weight among voters of professionals, others in the middle class, and layers of workers most open to middle-class illusions promoted by the capitalist rulers.

“So-called plebiscitory democracy damages the interests of working people,” said Argiris Malapanis, SWP national campaign director, at the California Socialist Workers conference. “In periods of growing economic and social crises and spreading war preparations such as today, it will be used more often—even if hesitantly—by the political representatives of the propertied classes to maintain the stability of capitalism and of the two-party system through which they rule.”

If the governor succeeds in passing even one of the measures he is pushing, it will be a victory for the anti-working-class offensive of both the Republican and Democratic parties in California and nationwide, said Joel Britton, an SWP National Committee member, at the meeting.  
 
Measures restricting unions
Proposition 75 in the Schwarzenegger package of initiatives prohibits public employee unions from contributing dues money to political campaigns without prior “written consent” of each individual union member every year. It requires these unions to submit records to a Fair Political Practices Commission, which would oversee the use of dues funds for political contributions.

A similar measure, Proposition 226, which would have imposed such requirements on all unions in California, was narrowly defeated in 1998. Schwarzenegger threw his support behind “Prop 75” at the Republican state convention in mid-September.

“Proposition 75 would impose greater intervention by the government in the unions,” said Newberry, who is a meat packer. “It would tie public workers’ unions in red tape. We are for the independence of the trade unions from the capitalist state, not just on a federal level but state and local as well. We urge working people and others to vote no.”

Proposition 74 is also a direct attack on the union movement. It increases probation from two to five years for teachers, librarians, and other certified school employees from kindergarten to Grade 12. And it makes it easier for school boards to fire teachers.

“We call on working people to defeat this proposition too,” Newberry said. “Labor should campaign to end probation for all workers, including those in the classroom.

“The United Mine Workers union has set an example here,” Newberry explained. Workers join the union the first day they are hired in a UMWA-organized company, with no probation. “That’s an essential step to enforce safety and defend job conditions in any workplace,” she said, “be it a classroom, a coal mine, or a packing house or other factory.”  
 
Strengthening power of executive
The Socialist Workers Party is also calling on working people to vote no on propositions 76 and 77, also central to the California governor’s agenda.

These initiatives allow the governor under “fiscal emergencies” to reopen state contracts with public employees and cut wages and benefits. Proposition 76 also grants the governor substantial new authority to cut state spending.

Proposition 77 takes away from the legislature, an elected body, the power to draw up electoral districts and gives this power to a panel of three retired judges, a body to be appointed by “legislative leaders.”

These initiatives strengthen the power of the executive branch of the government. The bipartisan war party considers such centralization of power necessary—from the White House, to governors’ and mayors’ mansions across the country—in order to advance U.S. capital’s exploitation and oppression of working people at home and abroad.

“The U.S. rulers have increased such centralization substantially since the victory over both their imperialist rivals and their allies during World War II,” said Malapanis at the California state conference. “And they are seeking to accelerate that strengthening of executive authority—including the power of the armed forces and the cops—as they enter the opening stages of depression conditions and expanding wars on a world scale for the first time since the 1930s.”

Malapanis pointed out that propositions 76 and 77 contain elements, even if still small and embryonic, of what Marxists have called “Bonapartism.” This refers to the tendency of capitalist ruling classes, in face of deepening social crisis and militarization, toward a strengthened executive power that presents itself as “standing above class interests,” as it organizes to stabilize the dominance of the ruling class.

That’s good reason for working people in California, and the world over, to oppose these initiatives, the state meeting decided.  
 
Woman’s right to choose abortion
SWP campaign supporters have been joining with others to defeat Proposition 73, which would require parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period before a woman under 18 can get an abortion. “This is an outright attack on a woman’s right to choose abortion, to control her own body,” said Newberry.

Schwarzenegger continues to present himself as a “pro-choice Republican” who backs Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision decriminalizing abortion, and he is not campaigning for Proposition 73. The governor nonetheless calls for a “yes” vote on the initiative.

“I wouldn’t want to have someone take my daughter to a hospital for an abortion or something and not tell me,” he told a reporter earlier this year. “I would kill him if they do that.”

“Most unions in this state are not acting on the reality that defending a woman’s right to choose is a central question not just for workers who are female,” said Newberry, “but for the unity and fighting power of labor. Our campaign is urging the entire union movement to join in the effort to defeat this antiwoman and anti-working-class measure.”

The California Nurses Association is doing so. It has publicly opposed Prop 73, pointing out that “the initiative is a back door attempt viewed by its proponents as a first step to eliminate the constitutional right to the option of abortion and would have a disproportionate effect on limiting medical options for the most impoverished young women.”  
 
Nationalize the energy industry
Socialist Workers adopted a “not voting” position on Proposition 80—“The Repeal of Electricity Deregulation and Blackout Prevention Act.” This measure is backed by the Democratic Party and other liberal forces, as well as their radical followers. Its supporters claim it will provide relief from rising energy prices and breakdowns of the electrical grid by requiring the state to organize “competitive bidding” among energy providers.

“This measure is a fake and a fraud,” said Joel Britton at the California socialist campaign conference. “Manipulating the capitalist market will neither result in lower rates nor eliminate the danger of blackouts.” Demands for more “regulation” of the energy monopolies are designed not to benefit the majority but to protect the profits of the wealthy families who control them, Britton said.

“We demand that these energy trusts open their books,” he said. “Working people have a right to know the ‘business secrets’ of these powerful monopolies, to expose the behind-the-scenes deals and swindles, and to get a true picture of the national income—produced by the working class—pocketed by the capitalists who own them.

“We call on the labor movement to fight to nationalize the energy and power companies!” Britton said. “Take them out of private hands and run them as public utilities for the benefit of the majority, under workers control!”

“That’s our answer to Proposition 80.”  
 
Universal, lifetime health care!
The Socialist Workers campaign in California is responding to two other initiatives on the November ballot by explaining the party’s demand to nationalize health care, at no cost, for all—from regular preventive medical checkups, to all forms of treatment, hospitalization, and prescriptions.

Propositions 78 and 79 present alternative plans to provide drug discounts for people below a certain income. Prop 78 invites pharmaceutical firms to offer drug discounts on “a voluntary basis” with no government penalties if they choose not to do so—something opponents of the initiative point out could be done by any drug company right now, with or without such a law! The SWP campaign is urging working people to vote no on this measure.

Proposition 79 would set needs-based criteria—estimated at incomes below $38,000 for individuals, or $77,000 for a family of four—for those not covered by Medicaid or other health insurance to receive a prescription discount card from the state Department of Health Services for a $10 annual fee.

Prop 79 is backed by most unions in the state, as well as many liberal political organizations. The California Nurses Association, while actively opposing Prop 78, has taken no position on Prop 79. “Our chief concern about 79 is that it doesn’t go far enough,” said a nurses’ union spokesperson in late September.

As the SWP state conference was discussing these two propositions last weekend, millions of working people across the state and around the country were absorbing the devastating implications of Delphi Corp’s recent decision to slash contractual health benefits for current and retired workers—an accelerating trend across more and more companies and industries.

Socialist Workers decided to take no position on Prop 79. Wendy Lyons, a Los Angeles-area supporter of the party’s ticket, pointed to the importance of campaigning for a nationalized health system to provide universal medical care for all.

SWP candidates and campaign supporters point out that working people, through the transformation of nature by our social labor, create all wealth. From that wealth, health care—as well as education, workers compensation, and a secure retirement pension—can and must be a lifetime right for every human being.

Universal social security of that kind is a precondition not just to stop the decimation of workers’ and farmers’ blood and bone, not just to prevent our class from being torn apart. It is the essential starting point for labor solidarity, and for the human solidarity that grows out of it.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home