Democratic, international socialism is the natural next step in the world's political evolution. Corporate capitalism is a morally degraded political dinosaur that is retarding the political and social evolution of the entire human race.
An appeal to all working people
From the World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/icfi/sepus.shtml
A fundamental political change in the United States is long overdue. Millions of working people realize that they are not represented in the political system as it now exists. None of their real concerns — for decent living standards, job security, guaranteed medical care, a bright future for their children in a world without wars and violence — are being addressed by the Democrats, the Republicans or the Reform Party of billionaire Ross Perot.
The Socialist Equality Party has been formed and is running candidates in the 1996 elections to advance a real alternative to these reactionary parties of big business. Our party alone represents the working class. The SEP uncompromisingly defends the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people: the working men and women whose productive labor creates the wealth of society.
The Socialist Equality Party opposes the capitalist system. We reject the claim that what's good for the Fortune 500 corporations is good for the American people and the world. Our party fights for the socialist principle that the economy should be organized democratically to serve the needs of the working class, not to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the bankers, corporate bosses and stock exchange speculators for profit.
A decent and secure job, a comfortable retirement, quality education, health care, housing and all other essential social needs should be guaranteed to every man, woman and child as a basic right. This is not a utopian dream. The material resources to realize these modest demands exist in abundance.
The enormous potential of modern technology and globally-integrated production should be used to vastly raise the living standards and cultural level of people in America and all over the world. But this potential is squandered by a system which subordinates the needs of the masses to the ever greater and more disgusting accumulation of personal wealth by a privileged few.
All around us we see a terrible spectacle of decay and desperation. Millions of children go hungry in America and conditions of social squalor exist all over the world. But everything is justified by the politicians, the corporate executives and the media with hypocritical claims that nothing can be done because "there is no money."
One fact explodes this lie:
The richest 358 people on earth, all billionaires, have a net worth equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 percent of the world's population — 2.3 billion people!
America has become the most unequal of all the advanced industrialized countries. The chasm which separates the rich from the general population is far greater in the United States than in the old European bastions of class privilege. In the US today the richest 1 percent of the population controls 40 percent of the wealth.
There are two Americas — the America of fantastic wealth for a tiny elite and the America of the vast majority of people, for whom the struggle to pay the rent or mortgage, finance the car note, retain health insurance, provide for the education of their children and care for their parents is becoming ever more difficult.
Every week thousands more are added to the list of "downsized" workers; the youth and the unemployed are channeled into poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs; hundreds of thousands more every year are pushed below the poverty line. The ranks of the homeless and destitute grow at the same time Wall Street celebrates record profits and booming share values.
The political establishment and the media tell working people they must choose between various candidates who are bankrolled by big business and do its bidding. In the 1996 elections corporate interests are doling out $600 million to buy political office for their handpicked stooges.
With one voice Dole, Clinton and Perot demand further cuts in social programs on which tens of millions depend. When they invoke ad nauseum the "American Dream," they ignore the fact that daily life for tens of millions of Americans is becoming a nightmare.
Support Jerry White and Fred Mazelis
The big business parties exude pessimism and despair. They are parties of cynicism and lies. They appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate: fear, prejudice and selfish individualism.
But there is an alternative for workers. It is the socialist program advanced by the SEP. Our party appeals to the humanitarian ideals and egalitarian traditions of the working class: the principle of solidarity with all workers in struggle, the readiness to fight for the common good, the confidence in a better future and determination to make it a reality.
More than 40,000 people signed petitions to place the SEP candidates on the ballot in the state of Michigan. Thousands more signed in Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. This outpouring of support constitutes a powerful demonstration that workers all across the country are looking for an alternative to the big business parties.
Our candidates for president and vice president are Jerry White and Fred Mazelis. The SEP candidate for senator from Michigan is Martin McLaughlin. The SEP candidate for Congress in Michigan's 13th District is Jim Hartnett and our congressional candidate in the 14th District is Helen Halyard.
Jerry White and Fred Mazelis will also be on the ballot in New Jersey and Minnesota, and Socialist Equality Party congressional candidates will be on the ballot in Dayton, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Socialist Equality Party has been formed for the purpose of mobilizing the working class to end the political rule of the financial oligarchy and place into power a democratic government of the workers, for the workers and, above all, by the workers. The workers government for which we fight would carry out those radical economic measures necessary to secure the social needs of the people. It would subordinate the capitalist market to the interests of society as a whole.
What the Socialist Equality Party stands for
Our party is based on four great principles.
1. The Socialist Equality Party stands for the international unity of the working class.
American workers are part of an international class of working people. In every part of the world workers face the same problems and the same enemy. Transnational corporations exploit a global pool of labor and demand wage cuts and the destruction of social reforms dating back to the turn of the century. They shift production from continent to continent, scouring the earth for the cheapest labor.
Under conditions of globalized production, where, for example, Nike pays workers in Indonesia $2 a day, American workers must unite with their fellow workers all over the world and develop an international strategy to defend jobs, wages and living standards.
Inseparable from the struggle to unite workers internationally is the fight against all forms of racism within the US. The SEP opposes all those who seek to whip up antagonisms between white, black, Asian and Hispanic workers.
The capitalist media and big business politicians, in accordance with the age-old strategy of divide and rule, focus on differences of skin color, religion, language and "ethnicity." Their goal is to foment hatred and have working people fighting one another over access to decent jobs, education, housing and health care, rather than uniting on the basis of their common social interests.
Racial quotas, "affirmative action" and all other prescriptions which pit one section of workers against another play into the hands of the corporate elite. They flow from an acceptance of the ruling class lie that the resources do not exist to provide for the needs of all the people.
The answer to all forms of racism is the struggle for equality. Everything that is necessary for a productive, secure and comfortable life must be made available to everyone, regardless of race, national origin or religion.
2. The Socialist Equality Party stands, as its name makes clear, for social equality.
Our party stands on the shoulders of the great progressive movements of the past — including the Revolutionary War that founded the United States, the French Revolution that proclaimed "liberty, equality, fraternity," the American Civil War that abolished chattel slavery and the 1917 October Revolution in Russia that established, in the face of overwhelming odds, the world's first workers state. All of these historic struggles raised high the banner of equality.
In the past, the greatest minds and bravest fighters for the interests of the people could only dream of realizing this goal. But we now live in a world where industry and technology have achieved such a high degree of development that its realization is truly possible.
It is not a lack of resources, but the existing forms of economic organization that block the attainment of social equality.
Under capitalism, all economic decisions are taken to reward those who own the forces of production. In this system, the rights of the owners of big business are elevated above all social concerns. Thus, in the name of the "market," factory closures, budget cuts and every other outrage against working people are justified.
A decade of ferocious downsizing has produced record profits for big business and growing misery for the working class. It has put paid to the old claim that a worker can be secure in his job if the company is making a profit. Today corporations record soaring profits through a ruthless purge of their employees, the replacement of full-time workers with part-time employees and "temps," forced overtime, speed-ups and a relentless assault on wages and benefits. The Federal Reserve Board denounces even the most paltry increase in the minimum wage as "inflationary" and raises interest rates for the explicit purpose of keeping unemployment high and wage levels low.
At the same time the livelihoods of workers are being tied directly to the gyrations of the stock market, as corporations abandon guaranteed pension funds and slash health benefits for retirees, forcing workers to gamble on their future well-being by investing in mutual funds, IRAs and 401-K plans. Inevitably millions of working people will face devastating losses as a result of the machinations of the huge shareholders and speculators who dominate the stock market.
Dozens of studies over the past several years have documented the immense and growing concentration of wealth. A few statistics provide an indication of the degree of social inequality in America:
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The share of US private wealth owned by the richest 1 percent of the population doubled from 1975 to 1990.
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Since 1989 the top 10 percent has increased its share of the wealth of the country from 61.1 percent to 66.8 percent. It now owns two thirds of the national wealth.
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The top 20 percent of the population takes in more income per year than the other four fifths of the population combined.
- The corporate chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company today makes 150 times more than the average production or service worker. In 1995 the CEOs of the 150 largest corporations averaged $5 million in total compensation.
The colossal level of social inequality in America makes a mockery of the democratic ideals that the US claims to represent. More than 200 years ago the revolutionaries who founded the United States proclaimed, "All men are created equal." This stirring phrase has become all but meaningless in modern-day America.
Children today are born into a country that is profoundly unequal. How can one speak of equality when working class parents are unable to send their children to decent schools, when millions suffer from malnutrition and tens of millions lack the most basic requirements of life, such as proper health care and housing? One look at the annual cost of a college education is sufficient to demolish all claims to equal opportunity under the profit system.
Such pervasive inequality is not merely a matter of corrupt politicians. It arises out of the very nature of the capitalist system.
There can be no real equality when a tiny segment of society, by virtue of its wealth and ownership of the factories, banks and stocks and bonds, is in a position to make the economic decisions that affect the lives of millions of people.
In the final analysis, the unrestrained political power of the capitalist class is based on its ownership and control of the productive forces. What exists today in the United States is not a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word, but a plutocracy — a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
The realities of American life are making it increasingly obvious that the prosperity of US capitalism is based on the ever more brutal exploitation of the working class. No honest and objective observer can deny that the interests of corporate wealth are at odds with the needs of the broad masses of the people. A social order which systematically sacrifices the interests of the vast majority to the greed of a privileged minority has failed and must be replaced by a more rational and just economic system that will serve the interests of society as a whole.
Contrary to the self-serving claims of the ruling class, the material foundations do exist for dramatically raising the living standards of the entire population of the world and abolishing all class distinctions. Complete social equality will not be achieved overnight, but it is an entirely realizable goal.
Once the basic means of production have been freed from the private ownership and control of the ruling class, man's resources can be systematically marshaled to eradicate poverty. On the basis of the planned development of the productive forces on an international scale, the material and cultural level of civilization will be enormously heightened and the entire population will reap the full benefit of the wealth produced by society.
3. The Socialist Equality Party stands for the social ownership and democratic control of the economy by the working people.
A workers government as fought for by the Socialist Equality Party would strive to extend the democratic control of the working class over the operation of the economy. It would systematically expand the sphere of public ownership of the means of production and make the satisfaction of social needs, rather than the accumulation of personal wealth, the driving principle of economic development.
By placing the largest concerns under public ownership — the banks, utilities, insurance and health conglomerates, major manufacturing corporations, oil monopolies, telecommunications and transportation giants — a workers government would subordinate the strategic heights of the economy to social control, making possible the rational and planned development of economic activity so as to serve the needs of the people.
In the capitalist system, workers have no say over the economic decisions which affect their lives. Whether or not they work depends on the self-interest and whim of the owners. Dictatorship, not democracy, prevails in the workplace.
In the socialist system advocated by the SEP, the direct influence of the working class over conditions in the workplace and the formulation of economic policy would be dramatically increased. Subject to the democratic input and control of the working class, economic policies and programs would be evaluated on the basis of their impact on the lives of the broad masses of the population.
Socialist planning does not require, and the SEP does not advocate, the expropriation of small and medium-sized businesses. The real enemy of small business is not the socialist working class movement, but big capital, as is seen today in booming profits for big business on the one hand and a record toll of personal and small business bankruptcies on the other. A workers government would establish a productive and mutually beneficial relationship between the publicly-run centers of the economy and small business.
4. The Socialist Equality Party stands for the political independence of the working class.
The fight for this program cannot be carried out through the parties of big business. The AFL-CIO's policy of tying the working class to the Democratic Party has led workers into a blind alley. It must be rejected. Workers must create their own party in order to fight for the policies that serve their interests. The SEP has been formed to build such a mass party of the working class.
Through their own party, the working people must fight for political power and create a just and truly democratic society. The aim of such a party is not merely to win elections and establish majorities in the existing institutions of the capitalist state, such as Congress. New and more popular institutions of self-government — in the neighborhoods and workplaces — must be formed and made the basis for a truly democratic system.
The alternative to the present government of big business is the establishment of a workers government, resting on the active and militant support of a politically aroused and vigilant working class.
The bipartisan political system and the class struggle
Both parties, Democratic and Republican, are engaged in a truly bipartisan assault on the working class.
The Clinton administration has completed the process of the virtual amalgamation of these two parties. He has presided over what amounts to a bipartisan government, carrying out in practice the brutal social policies demanded by Wall Street and proclaimed in more naked form by the Republicans.
Under Clinton, the Democrats and Republicans have imposed spending cuts far deeper than anything attempted by Reagan or Bush. His administration has embraced the Republican nostrum of a balanced budget, slashed 240,000 federal jobs, overseen the most rapid growth of social inequality in the post-World War II period and adopted the Republicans' "law-and-order" rhetoric to launch sweeping attacks on democratic rights.
Clinton's last act in the run-up to the GOP convention was to endorse the Republicans' bill to dismantle welfare, drastically slash food stamps and deny social benefits to immigrants, legal as well as so-called "illegal." This bill is a devastating attack not only on the poor, but on the working class as a whole. Its essential aim is to create a new and massive pool of cheap labor — millions of impoverished workers, native born and immigrant, who will have no choice but to take jobs at whatever wages and under whatever conditions the bosses demand.
The welfare bill creates a layer of workers with no rights and no protection, who will have three options:
- work for poverty wages
- enlist in Washington's mercenary army to serve as cannon fodder for military adventures around the world
- starve
Employers will use these millions of superexploited workers to drive down the wages of the rest of the work force.
Workers currently struggling to survive on eight, nine, ten or eleven dollars an hour — factory workers, public employees, retail workers — will be told they must work for even less. The common refrain will be: "If you don't want the job, there are plenty of others who do!"
Not since the days of chattel slavery has the government maintained a system of forced labor as brutal as that being imposed on welfare recipients. And just as workers in the North opposed slavery as a mortal threat to the interests of "free" labor, so today the entire working class must mobilize in opposition to this and all other attacks on the poorest and most defenseless sections of the population.
What workers will face after the elections
The next administration, whether headed by Clinton or Dole, will intensify the ruling class policies of social reaction at home and militarism abroad.
(Added note: this is exactly what has happened, from 1996 to the present day.)
The Republican convention, an assembly of rich people baying out the gospel of private greed, provided a glimpse of things to come. Dole's plan for a 50 percent capital gains tax cut and a 15 percent cut in income taxes will mean more than $1 trillion in new spending cuts by the year 2002. This will all but wipe out mass transit subsidies, federal aid to education, housing assistance, environmental protection and occupational health and safety enforcement. It will require the dismantling of Medicaid and massive cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Working people will lose tens of thousands of dollars worth of services in return for the few hundred they get back in tax cuts. The rich will pay even less in taxes than before, and many will pay nothing at all.
As for the Democrats, Clinton's election platform is an emphatic repudiation of the social reform policies of the New Deal and the Great Society. In lock step with the Republicans, it declares "the end of the era of big government." It boasts of Clinton's record of slashing social spending, building prisons, expanding the death penalty and attacking civil liberties.
It openly declares the subservience of the Democratic Party to big business: "Today's Democratic Party knows that the private sector is the engine of economic growth, and we fought to put America's house in order so private business could prosper."
Dole, Clinton and Perot all agree that what remains of the social safety net — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security — must go the way of welfare: these programs must be gutted to channel even more of the nation's wealth into the coffers of the banks and transnational corporations.
The capitalist politicians denounce "big government." What a fraud!
They want to destroy whatever remains of government-run social programs and regulations on business, while expanding the apparatus of police and prisons and extending the global reach of the American military.
They seek to establish a garrison state so as to carry out America's belligerent foreign policy and crush the opposition of the working class at home.
The attack on democratic rights and the growth of militarism
For Wall Street, democracy is valid only to the extent that it does not get in the way of the profit system. The government is endlessly engaged in attempts to restrict freedom of speech and other rights guaranteed under the Constitution, limit the scope of anticapitalist political and social activity and augment the power of the police and other forces of state repression.
The attack on social programs will be accompanied by an escalating assault on democratic rights. The anti-working-class character of the cuts being carried out by the Democrats and Republicans is already becoming clear to masses of people. Their full implications will become apparent with the onset of recession, when millions more are plunged into the ranks of the destitute, the homeless and the malnourished. A massive movement of social protest is inevitable, and the response of the ruling class will be increased repression.
The Socialist Equality Party stands for the fullest extension of democratic rights. Equality is incompatible with any form of discrimination, whether on the basis of race, national origin, religion or sexual preference. We call for the freeing of all political prisoners and workers jailed because of strike-related actions in defense of jobs and trade union rights. We are for the abolition of the death penalty. We support the unrestricted right of all women to abortion on demand.
The baiting of immigrant workers by Republicans and Democrats alike is the spearhead for all forms of racist demagogy and an offensive against the democratic rights of the working class as a whole.
The SEP upholds the principle that all workers must be able to live and work in whichever country they choose with full citizenship rights. American workers must repudiate the anti-immigrant chauvinism of the big business politicians and the trade union bureaucracy.
The latest attacks on Iraq provide a warning once again of the reckless and predatory character of US foreign policy. There is not another country in the world whose government talks so endlessly of peace and engages so precipitously in war. Since the coming to power of the Reagan administration, US forces have conducted full-scale invasions of Grenada, Panama and the Persian Gulf region, together with military occupations in Lebanon, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia. The turn by Washington to armed aggression has accelerated under Clinton.
It is axiomatic that as the social crisis deepens within the United States, the ruling class will increasingly resort to military adventures abroad as a useful distraction from its attacks on the working class at home and as a means of whipping up national chauvinism. At the same time the US uses its status as the dominant military power to bully rival nations in Europe and Asia in pursuit of the global interests of American big business — not those of the American people.
History shows that it is the working people who suffer the tragic consequences of the military adventures of the ruling class. The greatest enemy of peace is the capitalist system itself, which inflicts untold suffering in the form of poverty and exploitation, compounded by the wholesale destruction of human life in wars for plunder and domination.
It is impossible to have social equality and justice in the United States while oppression and exploitation prevail abroad.
American workers cannot successfully fight big business at home if they turn a blind eye to what the US government is doing, in the interests of the multinational corporations, in other parts of the world.
Moreover, the billions of dollars spent to fuel the military machine represent a substantial portion of the social wealth produced by the working class. Rather than being used to tackle urgent social problems, these resources are squandered on tanks, aircraft carriers, missiles and other costly instruments of death and destruction.
The Socialist Equality Party stands for peace. We are for the fraternal collaboration of the working people of the world in the rational utilization and development of the resources of the planet.
Toward this end, we call for the dismantling of the Pentagon and the CIA, the withdrawal of all US troops and the closure of all bases maintained by American imperialism overseas.
War industries should be converted to useful production, with no loss in jobs, wages or benefits to the workers. Upon coming to power, the SEP would pursue a socialist foreign policy based on solidarity with the workers and oppressed peoples of the world.
The betrayal of the AFL-CIO
The old organizations of the working class provide no alternative to the class-war policies of the big business parties. In the face of the capitalist offensive they have proven bankrupt. The AFL-CIO is enthusiastically campaigning for Clinton's reelection, brushing aside his welfare bill and all the other attacks carried out by his administration against working people.
The AFL-CIO has failed the working class. For two decades it has worked directly and openly with big business and the government to impose mass layoffs, wage cuts, speed-up and the destruction of social programs. It has betrayed every struggle of workers against union-busting and concessions, from the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981 to the Detroit newspaper strike today. It has adopted the corporatist program of labor-management "partnership," in which union officials function as the industrial policemen of the employers.
Workers built the unions in great social struggles in order to establish organizations that would defend their collective interests. But none of the tasks for which the unions were established — the defense of jobs, working conditions and wages — are carried out by the present-day organizations. They have degenerated and integrated themselves into the corporate establishment and the capitalist state. They have become organs not of the working class, but of a privileged and wealthy bureaucracy.
A powerful and fighting political movement of the working class, including genuinely democratic organs of workers industrial struggle, can be built only through a rebellion and break with the AFL-CIO apparatus.
The socialist alternative
The defenders of the capitalist system — the big business parties, the media, the trade union bureaucracy — all share a common outlook of cynicism and demoralization, because they uphold a diseased social order.
For the working class, however, the perspective of socialism provides an enormous source of optimism and determination, because it reveals the potential for using the achievements of science and technology to tremendously enhance the life of the people.
Socialism starts from the interests of the working people, not the capitalist elite. It calls for the common ownership of the means of production for the purpose of satisfying the needs of society. That is why the capitalist class has waged such a relentless campaign of distortion and lies to defame it.
The main lie has been to equate socialism with the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union. In reality, Stalin betrayed the socialist revolution carried out by the Russian working class. The bureaucracy he headed arose following the revolution and usurped political power from the Soviet workers. It killed the leaders of the revolution and carried out a bloody purge of the genuine socialists.
Nowhere were socialism and Marxism subjected to such repression as in the USSR.
The capitalist system is condemned by the statements of its own defenders, who declare that jobs, decent education, medical care, housing and pensions are incompatible with the demands of the market.
Then so much the worse for the market!
If this system cannot provide for the basic needs of the vast majority — and it cannot — then it must be replaced by a new and higher social order.
In advancing the socialist alternative, the Socialist Equality Party is speaking of a revolutionary transformation of society, to be effected by the working class through the conquest of political power.
The basic demands for which the SEP fights
The first task in the struggle for socialism is to place before the working class a program for which it can fight, building up its unity and developing its political understanding in the process. This program must put forward demands which address the basic needs of the working class.
These can be summed up in three broad issues:
- real job and income security
- the raising of workers' living standards
- the establishment of a far-ranging universal system of social benefits
To this the big business media and the capitalist politicians will respond: "There is no money." This is a lie. The material and financial resources exist, but they must be harnessed and developed to meet the needs of society, rather than the profit greed of the ruling class.
As an important first step, the Socialist Equality Party calls for a radical revamping of the tax code, to channel needed funds from the coffers of the corporations and the rich into the constructive task of creating jobs and raising working class living standards. We call for a genuinely progressive income tax, which will drastically lessen the tax burden on working people and increase the share contributed by those who can afford it.
The anti-tax demagogy of the capitalist politicians is aimed at achieving just the opposite. It is an expression of the pig-headed greed of the ruling class. Not satisfied with the web of loopholes that presently exists, it demands the right to pay no taxes at all. The argument that taxes are an intolerable infringement on the wealth of the ruling class ignores the fact that the wealth was produced by the working class in the first place.
In calling for a rational and just tax system, the SEP is not motivated by vengeance. Our aim is not to reduce the rich to conditions of penury. But the obscene accumulation of wealth at the expense of the masses is socially destructive and reactionary and must be ended.
For jobs and income security!
As an initial measure to guarantee every worker a good-paying and secure job, the SEP calls for a massive redirection of economic resources to establish a five-year $500 billion program of public works. This would provide decent-paying jobs for all unemployed workers. This program would be dedicated to rebuilding the blighted cities of the US. Its priorities would be the construction of schools, low-cost housing, hospitals, libraries, museums, recreations centers, parks and modern mass transit.
To open up millions of new jobs and give workers more leisure time, the SEP calls for a reduction in the standard work week from 40 hours to 30 hours, with no loss in pay.
To ensure that no worker has to live in poverty, the SEP proposes that the minimum wage be raised to $10 an hour and indexed to compensate fully for every rise in the cost of living. In addition, automatic cost-of-living increases, adjusted monthly, must be instituted for every worker's wage, as well as for Social Security, pensions and other benefits.
To end the pauperization of the unemployed, the SEP demands that laid-off workers be provided with their regular wages until they are rehired and guaranteed that they will suffer no loss in wages or benefits in their new job. All young people 18 and older, once they have completed their education, must be granted jobless benefits, to be maintained until they have obtained a good-paying job. Such benefits must be extended as well to the long-term unemployed, including those presently on welfare.
We furthermore call for a ban on the cut-off or reduction in medical, dental or optical coverage for jobless workers, and a ban on evictions, foreclosures and shutting off of heat, electricity, water or telephone service for the unemployed.
Full social benefits for all!
The Socialist Equality Party calls for a massive extension of the social safety net to provide decent housing, medical care and nutrition to all. We call for a comprehensive child care system, financed by the government and available to all working class families, free of cost.
Against the attacks by big business and the capitalist politicians on public education, the SEP calls for a vast expansion and improvement in the public school system, as well as job training and apprenticeship programs available to all youth and young workers. Higher education must be provided at no charge to all who wish to go to college.
The success of the Socialist Equality Party depends on the determination and self-sacrifice of workers who will fight to build it. We call on all workers to critically examine their own political preconceptions. It is time to put aside illusions in the Democratic Party and ideological prejudices that have left workers unable to defend themselves against the onslaught of the corporations and the government.
It is necessary for workers to seriously consider and adopt the revolutionary socialist alternative to the capitalist system.
The SEP is running candidates in the 1996 elections to bring our socialist program to as broad an audience as possible. But our party was not founded merely for the purpose of contesting elections. It was established to politically educate the working class and build a mass workers movement against capitalism. A party such as ours can come to power only through the active allegiance and militant support of a large majority of the working population. The revolution which we envision will be the most popular and democratic movement in history — a movement of working people to put an end to injustice and exploitation.
We urge all workers to vote for the SEP. A vote for our candidates is a political statement in favor of the independent mobilization of the working class against the profit system. Above all we call on workers, young people, students and unemployed workers to join the Socialist Equality Party.
Raise high the banner of working class internationalism, equality and socialism! Join and build the Socialist Equality Party — a party you can be proud of, a party worth fighting for!
Reposted with permission from the
World Socialist Web Site
www.wsws.org
editor@wsws.org
Socialist Equality Party (U.S.)
International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
sep@socialequality.com
PO Box 48377
Oak Park, MI 48237
Tel. (248) 967-2924
"The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the leadership of the world socialist movement, the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938."In all countries the sections of the International Committee fight to unite the world working class in a common struggle for social equality.
"The ICFI rests on the proud heritage of the movement founded by Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution."
Important note:
Because of the decades of deceitful propaganda from both capitalists and Stalinists, most people in the U.S. are likely also to make the mistake of confusing the Russian Revolution of October 1917 with the Stalinist dictatorship of the Soviet Union which came later. However the historical fact is that Stalinism actually destroyed democratic socialism in Russia and replaced it with a bureaucratic dictatorship. Leon Trotsky fought for the democratic, international ideals of Marxist socialism and was therefore assassinated by Stalin in 1940.
The collapse of the Stalinist Soviet Union in 1991 and its rapid mutation into a capitalist mafia state was a great victory for American capitalism. It was also the inevitable outcome of Stalinism. All the Stalinist countries of the former Soviet bloc then exchanged the Stalinist tyranny for the even more degraded tyranny of mafia capitalism.
But the Stalinist form of tyranny had been forced on them by the relentless covert subversion and overt military-economic pressure of the United States and its whoring capitalist allies. Genuine socialist democracy has no chance of surviving anywhere in the world as long as the United States remains a capitalist military power. Only tyrannical, Stalinist police-states can provide sufficient state security even to temporarily fight off CIA subversion. Genuinely democratic, socialist societies have no chance at all. They are too open and free, and therefore too vulnerable.
Everywhere in the world socialist democracy has arisen, the fascism-promoting United States has quickly destroyed it.
For more information on the difference between Stalinism and genuine Marxist socialism, see:
In Defense of the Russian Revolution:
A Reply to the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification
by David North
http://www.wsws.org/history/1995/apr1995/idrr.shtml
See also:
Revealing Quotes 2: Corporate Capitalist Plutocracy
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti
"When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without a government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise."— Thomas Paine
Common Sense
The differences between Stalinism, communism, anarchy and democratic socialism
Stalinism is the dictatorship of a nationalistic, political-party bureacracy. This is what most people mistakenly call "communism" — thanks to both capitalist and Soviet Stalinist propaganda. However, the true and original meaning of the word "communism" is a form of social organization that is totally democratic. It is exactly what the word suggests: communal. Democratic communism is the final stage in the evolution of democratic socialism.
The true meaning of "anarchy" is also contained within the structure of the word: an-archy, "no rulers." But it does not mean chaos. Chaos is obviously just another form of tyranny. Total freedom from any and all forms of tyranny is the ideal of true anarchists. And this is the ideal of democratic communism too — co-operative, non-hierarchical, communal living, with all decisions of the group made by democratic consensus.
Democratic socialism is an intermediate step. It is based on the observation that the vast majority of our heterogenous human race still requires some limited degree of hierarchical — but honestly democratic — government in order to maintain peace and stability. Democratic socialism is not supposed to be permanent. It is a system that will be evolved by society as society itself evolves to an ideal condition of perfect, egalitarian harmony and freedom.
Harmonious anarchy, or democratic communism, is that ultimate social ideal where there will be no need for any government. But for the present, democratic socialist government is simply realism. At this stage of human evolution, anarchy is workable only in small, intellectually homogenous groups. It will be perfectly obvious to anyone with a little knowledge of history and enough experience in life that if all governments miraculously disappeared overnight, societies would initially degenerate into the tyranny of chaos. After a short period of violent chaos, societies would quickly organize themselves around dominant egos, or warlords, for mutual protection.
This assumption is based not only on the events of history, but on an examination the fundamental nature of individuals within society. The way in which a society is organized will inevitably be a direct expression of the sum total of that society's component individuals. Virtually all people in the world are egocentric, to varying degrees. Most people are deeply and primitively egocentric. Because they suffer from egocentricity, most people do not really like or trust most other people. They co-operate within the larger society primarily for selfish survival, not because they love and care about each other.
The greatest problem, however, is that there are a great number of people who's egocentricity is severely pathological. And some of these people are very intelligent and possess leadership abilities. Furthermore, the vast majority of people in the world are easily fooled and easily led by individuals within their own cultures. History is proof enough of this. And evil leaders never seem to have any trouble finding legions of homicidal psychopaths to fill the ranks of their armies, navies, air forces, intelligence agencies and police forces.
And yet all these psychopaths are still a small percentage of humanity. It's amazing, therefore, that they are able to wield as much control as they do over the vast majority of people. In a great many countries the explanation for this tyranny is that it originates from outside their societies, from the United States government and military. It is truly out of their control. Their fascist governments are forcibly kept in place by the United States and there is nothing the people can do about it. If they try to resist they are slaughtered and tortured by the hundreds of thousands. And no matter what they do they are impoverished by the tens of millions.
So what is the explanation for American society? There is no tyranny outside of the United States which oppresses the American people. Why do they submit to and even applaud the evil of their government and military? The only explanation for this is that the vast majority of Americans are not only stupid, they are morally corrupt. They may not be homicidal psychopaths themselves, but they aren't at all enraged by those who are — as long as the psychopath wears a uniform. Most Americans are not truly good people. They are very easily corrupted by evil influences, and therefore they permit themselves to be dominated by evil people.
But even if the world were to be blessed by the total annihilation of the United States, that would not end all of humanity's problems. Even with the inevitable demise of the Great Satan humanity will not be prepared to create a paradise on Earth, free of all authority structures. The vast majority of humanity are in a sufficiently pathological condition of egocentricity that they are incapable of living harmoniously with each other without some degree of benevolent external control. Without the truly benevolent authority of democratic socialist government, the organization of societies would remain in the degenerate condition of fascist mafia-capitalism, or primitive, feudal warlordism, which is essentially the same thing.
Democratic socialism represents the beginning of political sanity and social health. But only the beginning.
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