| Back to Table of Contents | |
Back to Partisan Home |
| Previous Section | Next Section |
It was actually sad watching the progress of yet another (inevitable) betrayal of hopeful and desperate progressives in this election by the leadership of the Democratic Party and its professional hacks.
They used a tried and true formula. In 1968, after Eugene McCarthy "cleaned up" a generation of shaggy idealists and Bobby Kennedy briefly dazzled them, the Democrats finally gave us the lackluster Hubert Humphrey. In 1984 and 1988 Jesse Jackson rallied progressives and workers. What we got was the faithful Party functionaries Mondale and Dukakis. In the economic crisis of the 1930s, the "sainted" Franklin Roosevelt consolidated capitalist power with the New Deal.
Unfortunately capitalism cannot cure its own illness; it is the illness, and all its evils come with the package.
In this election it was easy to see the okie-doke coming. Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton made a brief splash. They presented the hope of really ending war and meeting human needs without abandoning capitalist parties as a road to change. But they got no real consideration from their party. Howard Dean, a centrist liberal who was sort of against the war in Iraq, attracted level-headed liberals and self-proclaimed progressives.
As soon as it appeared Dean might have a chance, the Party machinery anointed the staid John Kerry as their candidate. We ended up with a Democratic Party candidate who offered a seemingly softer approach to oppression at home while actually attempting to one-up the right on imperialist war. Sadly, those who started the trek down this self-defeating road felt they had to stay with a Democrat because they had been convinced that Bush was too powerful, too fascist, too evil -- and we the people were too weak to successfully resist.
The fact is, if you do not oppose capitalism and imperialism, you cannot defeat them. Supporting Kerry was in no way opposing either of those monsters.
The Democrats not only successfully took us out of the race -- with the help of the union bureaucrats they for the most part took us out of the streets as well. And the only time poor and working people in this country have ever gained even the smallest meaningful reform has been when we were in the streets, regardless of which big-money party was in power. The Democratic wing of capitalism steals the power from those struggles, dilutes reforms to levels that capital can live with and makes damned sure that we never think about gaining the power to make our own reforms. They beat us and shoot and jail our leaders and tell us to love them for it. This is one reason why it is so important to build an independent electoral expression of our mass resistance.
I don't blame the ordinary people who supported Kerry. I work for a living. I'm a shop steward in my workplace and I heard my friends and co-workers expressing their fear and desperation. They felt there was no hope, and we all badly need hope. I do blame those professional labor and political activists, and "progressive" academics -- celebrated and privileged so-called leaders who should know better. The shameful truth is that they all too often do know better, but they also know which side their bread is buttered on.
So the question becomes, "What do we do now?" No one has all the answers. Here are a few suggestions for consideration.
Let us transform the protest movement into one of resistance. We need to find targets such as military recruiters, major banks, defense manufacturers. We must relentlessly expose their role, and make it difficult or even impossible for them to operate as usual.
Let us take the struggle to our workplaces. Where we have unions we must make them more militant, openly speaking out against the rule of capital. We must call on the labor movement to rediscover the power of the political strike. Where we do not have unions we must organize them.
Let us continue to stage major demonstrations, but we must also build local protests and do regular outreach, education and organizing in our neighborhoods.
Let us abandon sectarianism. Anti-capitalists of every stripe should operate under one umbrella of resistance, based on clear, broad principles of unity. We must democratically debate, respect our differences, and act on our agreements.
We need a national electoral representation of that resistance. In California that electoral arm right now is the Peace and Freedom Party. The Greens represent protest, but they do not oppose capitalism nor call for its end.
We must come together to challenge those who profit from war, exploitation and oppression. Working people must claim their right to govern the world for the future of all humanity.
[J. Kevin Bishop is a shop steward in the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and south state chair of the Peace and Freedom Party.]
| Back to Table of Contents | |
Back to Partisan Home |
| Previous Section | Next Section |