Vol. 72/No. 25      June 23, 2008

The feature article, by Jack Barnes, is titled “Revolution, Internationalism, and Socialism: The Last Year of Malcolm X.”

In it, Barnes explains how a socialist revolution opens “the possibility of using the state power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is far and away the most powerful instrument fighting toilers can ever wield, to advance the battle to eradicate racism, national oppression, women’s second-class status.”

The article—which will appear as part of an upcoming Pathfinder book Black Liberation and the Fight for Workers Power—shows how Black workers have occupied a weight in the front ranks of working-class struggles disproportionate to their percentage among working people in the United States. Barnes calls this a “startling record,” and points out “the same cannot be said of the big majority of oppressed nations or nationalities in general in other parts of the world.”

The article traces the conclusions that follow from this about the social forces that must combine to carry out a socialist revolution in the United States.

A correct understanding of the vanguard role of Black workers in revolutionary class battles in the United States gave the communist movement the confidence, Barnes explains, “to recognize the revolutionary significance of the political development of Malcolm X.”

Malcolm X, the article explains, was an example of the fact that “in the imperialist epoch, revolutionary leadership on the highest level of political capacity, courage, and integrity converges with communism not simply toward the communist movement.”

This article gives the reader a clearer appreciation of the development of Malcolm X as a world-class revolutionary leader, who in the course of the class struggle began moving toward becoming a communist. This fact holds important lessons about the historical process of development of leadership of the revolutionary working-class movement worldwide.

With the sputtering out of the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, the first article in the magazine—“The Clintons’ Antilabor Legacy: Roots of the 2008 World Financial Crisis,” also by Jack Barnes, could not have come out at a better time. It is a compilation of two pieces, published in 2001 and 2008.

Together they present the antilabor shift in domestic policy that the Democratic White House and Republican Congress converged on during the Clinton years.

The first section was originally published in the 2001 edition of the Pathfinder book Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. It describes the steps taken by the U.S. ruling class in those eight years: from the expansion of the U.S.-led European military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, up to the borders of the former Soviet Union, to the dismantling of Aid to Families with Dependent Children—the biggest single erosion yet of the federal social security system by the U.S. ruling class.

The latter section, which was printed in last week’s issue of the Militant, was written after the opening of the world financial crisis in 2007. It points to the economic policies carried out by the Clinton administration that added fuel to the mania of debt speculation and leveraged betting on Wall Street, while further eroding the standard of living of working people.  
 
Labor and nature
The third item is a statement of the Socialist Workers Party titled “The Stewardship of Nature Also Falls to the Working Class: In Defense of Land and Labor.” It is a companion piece to the article “Our Politics Start with the World,” which appeared in New International No. 13.

This piece answers well the campaigns of hysteria—like the recent global warming panic—that aim to divert attention from the real source of the degradation of the conditions of the worker and the natural environment: the profit system.

It traces the social origins of what are often presented as “natural” or “environmental” disasters—from the devastation caused by the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the 2003 heat wave in France, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to the “scarcity” imposed by capitalism that has led to widespread protests over food prices.

This system, it concludes, “will inevitably continue to ravage humanity and the planet we inhabit. It cannot be stopped without uprooting capitalism itself.”  
 
Character of World War II
The final piece included in this issue is “Setting the Record Straight on Fascism and World War II: Building a World Federation of Democratic Youth That Fights Imperialism and War.” This letter was sent by the national leadership of the Young Socialists in the United States to the leadership committees organizing the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in April 2005. That gathering drew some 17,000 delegates from 144 countries to Caracas, Venezuela, in August of that year, under the banner of anti-imperialist solidarity.

The letter was prompted by a proposal to dedicate the final day of the conference to a celebration of the victory of the Allied powers in World War II.

Using the example of the Communist Party in the United States, the letter traces the anti-working-class role of the Stalinist parties, which following the dictates of Moscow, lined up behind the banner of their own ruling class in the imperialist slaughter.

Above all what this edition of New International points to is the necessity and possibility of making a socialist revolution in the United States. It is a necessary tool for understanding the character and impact of the ruling-class offensive against wages, working conditions, and living standards of working people worldwide. And it shows, through clear historical examples, the road down which working people must advance towards ending the dictatorship of capital and taking political power in their own hands.  
 
 
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