Communist Party USA

Introduction

I want to welcome you to Unity Center and wish you and your families a belated Happy New Year. I hope the coming year meets all of your personal and political expectations. And to those of you who were daring enough to make New Year's resolutions, I wish each and every one of you, including myself, good luck in fulfilling our resolutions whatever they may be.

Initially we had planned a meeting of our National Board for the end of January - Super Bowl Sunday, I believe. But later we had second thoughts and decided to meet sooner and enlarge the number of participants. We were guided by two time-tested maxims of the communist movement: "the early bird gets the worm" and "two heads are better than one." More seriously, we strongly felt that a more representative meeting of our leadership was absolutely necessary at this moment.

Under normal circumstances we might not have done this, but these times are anything but normal. A right wing administration is moving into the White House. An economic crisis is in its early stages. And, finally, the presidential election was literally stolen right before the eyes of the American people - something that shocked even some of us gathered in this room.

With reckless abandon and contemptuous disdain of the people's will, the extreme right steam rolled over democratic and constitutional principles in order to guarantee that all three branches of the federal government, including the White House, were in their hands.

The suppression of the vote before the elections and the undercounting of tens of thousands of votes following the elections were pervasive, systematic, and coordinated. It was a scorched earth, wins-at-all-costs policy of the Republican right if there ever was one, complete with intimidation by state police, hired thugs, purged voter registration rolls, old and inefficient voting machines, and confusing ballots.

Targeted with a special vengeance were African American, Haitian, and Latino voters in counties throughout Florida. And the reason is simple. Had minority voters had the same access to the polls as had voters in the wealthy white communities and had their vote been fully and fairly counted, Al Gore
would be the president-elect rather than Dubya.

Jeb and his operatives understood this fact as well - and as we know now - planned accordingly. It was an "American coup" as the headline of The
People's Weekly World said.

Lending a helping hand to the Bush family in their savage assault on democracy was the monopoly-owned and -controlled mass media.

But more disturbing to millions of American people was the presence of five far right wing extremists hiding under judicial robes on the highest court of our land.

They would have been more appropriately dressed in brown rather than black robes and on the payroll of the Bush campaign committee than paid by taxpayers like us.

This majority of five acted like a judicial lynch mob. Their reversal of the Florida State Supreme Court slammed the door shut arbitrarily, undemocratically, and unconstitutionally on a full and fair recount of tens of thousands of votes in Florida.

This assault on our democracy, as New York Congressman Gerald Nadler bravely said, reeked with the whiff of fascism. Virulent racism against
African American, Haitian, Latino and other racially oppressed peoples, anti-Semitism, and the complete contempt for democratic norms and institutions were the footsteps on Bush's march to the White House.

Some would now like to turn this election theft of the 2000 elections by
Bush operatives into a fading historical memory. Let bygones be bygones, they argue.

As an abstract idea this sounds good on the surface. But closer to the ground it has little merit. In fact, anything less than a full investigation of the travesty of justice that occurred in Florida would be politically and morally wrong. And such an investigation should be conducted by a National People's Commission of Inquiry - not by Dubya's Justice Department and Civil Rights Commission.

Too many lives have been lost, too many tears shed, and too many dreams deferred in the long march for the right to vote, especially in the South, to allow this violation of democratic rights to be expunged from our nation's collective consciousness and for these crimes to go unpunished.

SPECIAL MEETING

The next four years are shaping up to be a defining moment for our country, simultaneously pregnant with huge dangers and ripe with political possibilities.

In my speech to our annual holiday party I mentioned that a historical parallel exists between this period and the period just preceding the civil war.

Now some of you may think that my case suggesting a historical parallel between today and the decade preceding the Civil War is a bit thin on evidence. And maybe on closer inspection of the historical record we will find that you are right and I'm wrong.

After all, God and Fred Gaboury know it won't be the first time that I'm guilty of an erroneous interpretation of history. But even if I am, one point that I won't concede is this: A fundamental struggle over democratic rights, understood in the broadest sense, is moving to a new stage. It pits the extreme right, who are determined to severely restrict those rights, against a broad democratic movement that seeks to expand and deepen them. And the outcome of these struggles will leave their mark on our country for decades to come.

To its credit, even the usually staid New York Times captured the essence of this political moment.

"When work resumes tomorrow, in Washington and in all branches of the nation's vast economy," the editorial page editors wrote, "no one should doubt that this particular new year could be the threshold of a new era of contention over protecting the security of the nation, shaping the daily lives of the citizens and guarding the very land upon which we live."
(1-1-2001)

Thus the stakes are high and the task falling on the shoulders of this enlarged meeting of the National Board is to make the most rounded assessments of this defining moment and, in turn, to develop appropriate tactics and strategy.

This meeting, in contrast with the meeting of the National Committee in
November, will look more at where we are going and less at where we have been. It will try to anticipate some things that aren't entirely clear yet and may not be for a while, like the exact tactical strategy of the new administration, the scope and depth of the economic downturn, the readiness of the people to give Bush a honeymoon period, the legislative posture of the Democratic Party, the outlook of the labor movement, and so forth.

To a degree, the deliberations of our meeting will involve an element of speculation. Some of our conclusions will be somewhat tentative. This is, after all, a developing struggle and still in its early stages.

Nonetheless, this should not deter us from boldly making assessments of and drawing conclusions with regard to the main class and social forces that will occupy center stage in the coming year, the broader context in which they operate, in what direction we would like them to move, and what our role is at this critical political and economic juncture.

In all probability, we won't get it all right and we may not agree on every detail. But that's understandable, given the newness of the situation.

The main thing, however, is that we have a full and frank discussion in a comradely atmosphere and then allow unfolding events and struggles to test our conclusions and decisions. If they don't hold up, we will make appropriate corrections. Even if they do, we should constantly refine them as conditions change on the ground.

Needless to say, this is a big challenge, but it is not as daunting as it might seem. After all, most of the players on both sides of this struggle are not strangers to us. We are familiar with their positions on a range of issues. We have broad connections and rich experience gained in the course of the 2000 elections. Thus, we don't have to construct an altogether new strategy and set of tactics, in my opinion.

Admittedly, the political situation is different in many ways. But not so different that the strategic and tactical concepts that we employed in the elections of last year should be trashed.

Doesn't the extreme right remain the main enemy? Doesn't the assembling of broad, militant coalitions and struggles continue to be the main task of the labor led people's movements? And isn't our role to join with others and help to give leadership to these coalitions and struggles?

To be sure, our strategic and tactical policies as well as our programmatic solutions will have to be adjusted and applied differently. That goes without saying. And the quicker and more creatively we make those adjustments the better. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, we will have gone a long way in this direction.

THE ECONOMY

Gradually at first, and now at a much quicker speed, the developing economic downturn is creeping into the news and public consciousness. It is no exaggeration to say that how it plays out in the next several months will weigh heavily on our nation's economic and political life.

There seems near universal agreement among economic observers of different political persuasions that the economy is in a downturn after the longest expansion of this century.

The main question that seems unresolved is what the scope, depth, and duration of the cyclical downturn will be. To put the matter more succinctly, the issue is whether the landing will be soft or hard.

Before addressing this crucial issue, let me mention some of the emerging evidence of a weakening economy. Corporate profits in the last half of last year and estimated profits for this year have taken a nose drive. According to one forecast, aftertax profits in 2001 are expected to increase by less than 1 per cent compared with a 15 per cent increase last year. And as we know, it's not just profits, but profits expectations that drive or slow down the economic engine of US capitalism and capitalism anywhere for that matter.

Overall output is also beginning to sag with the sharpest drops in the manufacturing sector, which remains a leading and dynamic sector of the economy. The fall in output in the so-called new and old industries is substantial. In the tech sector, technology spending for communications equipment, information technology, and telephone services is tanking.

That's bad news and not just for the tech sector. A sustained slump in new technology investment will ripple its way through the economy. Remember new spending on technology has been one of the main engines of the economic expansion in the 1990s.

In the older industries like auto and steel, where the outlook is becoming gloomier by the day, sales are taking a nose dive, too. LTV, which employs nearly 50,000 workers, just filed for bankruptcy. And in auto, GM and Chrysler are in deep trouble. Last month GM eliminated the whole line of Oldsmobile cars and Buick's fate might be the same. And Ford is not far behind.

Unemployment is inching up as sales and profits sag in some sectors, if not across the full length of the economy. And everything suggests that it could climb dramatically, particularly in some industries and communities.

While much has been said about the recent gains in employment, income, and job occupational status of African Americans, Mexican Americans and other racially oppressed people, even a mild downturn could easily wipe out all or most of the improvement while a steeper crisis, if it follows similar racist patterns of the past - and there is no reason to think that it wouldn't - could bring back depression like conditions to these communities.

This enveloping economic cloud gathering around the economy was acknowledged by Fed Chair Alan Greenspan when he announced a cut of the federal funds rate, which governs inter-bank borrowing. Greenspan's announcement took place before the Fed's regular meeting scheduled for later this month thus suggesting quite clearly that the economic situation is deteriorating more rapidly than Greenspan had anticipated.

What makes this emerging crisis potentially explosive is a number of specific factors connected to the long expansion of the 1990s.

First of all, the slowdown is global. According to an article in The Wall
Street Journal, "Just a month earlier, the International Monetary Fund gave the global economy a relatively clean bill of health." Then the article went on to say, "Great minds, it seems, also err alike. With the suddenness that has surprised economists and corporate chieftains, the world's leading economies are all slowing down."

What is underlying this slowdown is what establishment economists call "mature markets," and what we call a worldwide crisis of overproduction in one industry after another, especially in manufacturing.

In 1998 when the strength of the US economy and the timely intervention of the federal reserve pulled the world economy from the edge of collapse, the current slowdown is truly global. The US capitalist economy, this time around, is sputtering and its reserves are stretched thin.

Its balance of payments deficit, which measures imports against exports, has ballooned to record, and in the end unsustainable, levels. The US economy simply can't continue to buy imports from other countries at anywhere near the pace that it has in recent years, thus dimming their hopes that the US economy will lift their economies out of their sluggishness.

Further, the declining value of the dollar relative to other currencies is making foreign investors who are heavily capitalized in US financial markets skittish and willing to entertain the option of currency flight from the dollar. While I don't want to overstate this, the US financial markets are no longer the safe haven they were two years ago when foreign investors were fleeing here.

Finally, the unprecedented polarization of wealth and amassing of record levels of debt that has sent financial markets soaring upward, thus making both big and small investors seem wealthier and able to borrow more, consume more, and invest more in the hyper-inflated stock market, is unsustainable too.

Financial bubbles and economic booms don't last forever. Capitalism is a self limiting and contradictory system. The same forces that cause it to spiral upward at some point cause it to spiral down. Marx made the point on many occasions that capitalism in the course of its very advances and in its very successes creates the conditions for its own undoing. How right this great genius was.

This is what we are seeing now. The combination of overproduction in an increasingly globalized economy is combining with the specific features of the economic expansion of the 1990s, especially its mammoth financial bubble, to once again reveal capitalism's crisis tendencies and rain its havoc on working and poor peoples worldwide.

Further fueling the economic crisis and causing increasing hardship for tens of millions is the rising cost of fuel prices across the country. In some places the high cost of fuel - electricity, gas, and home heating oil - are causing life threatening situations as we move into the most rugged part of what is already a cold winter. Perhaps the most explosive situation is in California.

Deregulation - and the corporate greed that inevitably accompanies it - has thrust the country's most populous state into a crisis from which there seems to be no answer short of public control and regulation of the energy complex. In the meantime, Californians, and especially the state's multi-racial working class and its racial minorities, are suffering the worst effects of the crisis situation.

Needless to say, if war breaks out in the Middle East a bad situation will get much worse almost overnight as the spiraling upward cost of fuel wends its way through the economy.

While we don't know what the extent of this crisis will be at the moment, we should be suspect of establishment economists who say it will be mild and easily tamed with appropriate monetary policy. The economic contradictions of capitalism sometimes reach the point where no monetary or fiscal medicine no matter how appropriate is able to overcome the contractionary pressures in the economy.

Sometimes, a virtuous circle gives way to a vicious circle where economic processes interact negatively on each other to worsen the capitalist economic crisis. Japan, which has been in a protracted economic slump for nearly a decade, is a good example of this phenomenon.

In any event, even a mild downturn will bring economic hardship to the working class and other sectors of the American people. We can expect a new wave of layoffs, plant closings, and permanent job loss. In the month of December alone, 133,713 workers were laid off, triple the number over November, while the filing for new claims for unemployment benefits was the highest in two and a half years, according to the Labor Department.

Particularly affected will be minority workers, welfare mothers, and immigrants. Found in precarious jobs that pay little and provide no benefits, they will be among the first to be laid off and many will not be eligible for relief of any kind.

This is an emergency situation calling for militant action and multiracial, multinational unity.

Certainly the victims of the economic crisis can't expect any help from the
Bush White House. Indeed, Bush will try to exploit the crisis to further shift the weight of the fall in economic activity onto the shoulders of working people, and especially its racially oppressed.

This emerging crisis calls for some emergency steps by labor and the people's movements. From our past experience we know that the unemployed themselves in big cities, suburban communities and rural towns have to be at the center of such movements and struggles - allied of course with their friends and allies, especially the labor movement and the organizations in the ghettoes and barrios.

In addition to organizing struggles, programmatic solutions to the economic crisis are needed. How do we address, for example, the special problems in the industrial sector where job opportunities are shrinking, in some cases during every phase of the economic cycle?

Again we shouldn't expect help from the Bush administration or corporate owners. And to make matters worse, the pressures will be immense on some of our coalition partners in the labor movement to make concessions in wages, benefits and conditions and to seize onto protectionism to save jobs.

Last time we were a pound short and two days late or something like that, but we shouldn't let this occur again. We have to get out in front of the learning curve in this developing crisis.

The crisis, especially if it is deeper than expected, will force its way into the debates on every major legislative and political issue. The projections regarding the surplus could change overnight which would change everything.
And the political weathervane of friend and foe alike will be scrambled and repositioned to take into account this storm as it settles on the country.

NEW ADMINISTRATION

On January 20 the Bush administration enters the White House. Bush and his cabinet appointees are of a conservative cast of mind.

Moderates and centrists they aren't. To the contrary, they occupy the right wing on the political spectrum. A quick glance at their political biography, political connections and political record amply confirm this point. One newspaper opined, "... those encouraged by Mr. Bush to expect a moderately conservative cabinet are now confronted with a team that features several key players chosen to reassure the ideological and corporate wings of conservative Republicanism."

Then it went on to mention the religious fundamentalist Ashcroft and Gale Norton, the new Secretary of the Interior and former understudy to Reagan appointee James Watt, as exemplars of the right wing makeup of the new administration. But since then, Dubya, if there were any illusions about the
political coloration of his cabinet, erased them by adding extreme right wing luminaries Linda Chavez and Donald Rumsfeld.

Political pundits have made much of the racial and gender diversity of the Bush team. It's as diverse as Clinton's, they say. But what Wall Street really likes, and what we should note, is the similar class outlook of the cabinet appointees. There are no political wild cards, no alien class influences in this bunch to rain on Bush's parade. You won't find anybody on this team hanging out in a neighborhood tavern in Pittsburgh. This gang is upper crust and proud of it.

No one should expect any confusion on their part about where their class loyalties lie.

While they are not all flame-throwers like Tom DeLay or Rush Limbaugh, make no mistake about it, Bush's team has solid right wing credentials. Its MO is a little more stealth-like, however.

In the end, Bush's appointees are the chosen representatives of the most reactionary, most anti-labor, most anti-women, most anti-people, racist and bellicose sections of transnational capital. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and
Donald Rumsfeld - not Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition - are setting the political and legislative agenda for this administration. Despite this, the cultural warriors and religious fundamentalists, like Robertson, seem very happy with Bush's choices.

A REACTIONARY COURSE OF ACTION

What should we anticipate coming from Bush's White House?

Left to its own devices, a Bush administration will aggressively pursue a reactionary course of action at home and abroad.

On the domestic front, it will turn Medicare and Social Security into vast new arenas of profit making and taking. It will privatize our public education system by using vouchers and giving a green light to for-profit schools. It will eliminate affirmative action, women's right to choose, gay rights, and bilingual education. It will severely curtail immigrant rights. It will squeeze labor out of the political-electoral arena as well as make union organizing impossible and union busting even easier than it already is. It will further tighten corporate control over the election process. It would expand the use of the death penalty. It will impose harsher eligibility requirements for all forms of government relief. It will further fill our prisons, and wink at racial profiling and police brutality. It will turn our land, air, water, forests, and other natural resources over to commercial interests while forestalling any remedial action on global warming. And it will turn a deaf ear to the critical needs of our cities and rural communities, both of which are mired in crisis.

In short, this administration's domestic policies will greatly sharpen the struggle on all fronts. It will greatly intensify class exploitation. It will aggravate racial and gender oppression to the extreme. It will curtail democratic rights all along the line.

NEW DANGERS WORLDWIDE

On the international front, the Bush administration's foreign policy will be extremely aggressive, mirroring in this sense its domestic policy. I've read in the press that isolationist tendencies might dominate the foreign policy of the new administration. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The main direction of Bush's foreign policy was outlined in a recent article of Foreign Affairs magazine, written by Condoleeza Rice. I was going to read some extensive excerpts from it, but because of time I'm going to set them aside.

This article contains, in distilled form, the main direction of the foreign policy of the Bush administration. As much as we disagreed with most aspects of Clinton's foreign policy, it appears that Bush's foreign policy will be more militarist, more interventionist and more chauvinistic. It is hard to imagine how it will do anything but heighten tensions and multiply hotspots worldwide.

This administration will show little hesitation about projecting American military power around the world. We can expect a hardening of relations with Cuba and a hostile attitude toward anti-imperialist movements and governments in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and other countries in South America and elsewhere. It will weigh in against the cause of Palestinian statehood and rights at this dangerous juncture of the crisis in the Middle East.

The Bush administration is determined not to be constrained by multi-lateral agreements and supra national bodies, including the UN. It is going to vigorously defend with military, economic, and diplomatic power what it calls the national interests - read transnational corporate interests.

And perhaps most ominously, this administration, by introducing the arms race into space, breathes new life into the nuclear weapons race that in the past decade has eased somewhat. Space weapons are the administration's trump card to dominate the world. To claim that this is a reluctant but necessary response to "rogue states" is nothing but a ruse to impose a "made in the usA" new world order on humanity.

This aggressive posture by the Bush administration corresponds with the new stage of globalization, the new stage of imperialism, the new stage of inter-imperialist rivalry, and the new stage of state monopoly capitalism. US imperialism has not given up its hegemonic aims.

Indeed, the Bush White House will seek to strengthen the dominance of US imperialism on a global scale over its enemies and friends. Neither Powell nor Rumsfeld nor Rice nor Cheney are ready for US imperialism to forgo its single super power status and everything that comes with that.

To be sure, inter-imperialist rivalry is growing in intensity, but this administration has no intentions of overseeing the weakening of the dominant status of US imperialism in world affairs. Just the opposite in fact. In the past, such rivalry led to world conflagrations.

I'm not suggesting that such a prospect is imminent now. It isn't. In fact, much more likely are growing tensions with Russia and China, resulting from the confrontational attitude of the new administration to these two powerful states. Nevertheless, over the longer term we should not rule out wars between competing capitalist states.

The role of the Bush administration, and for that matter the Clinton administration, calls into question the claim by some on the left that the state apparatus is turning into a paper tiger in a globalizing world.

Maybe that depends on what part of the world in which you sit. But from our vantage point in the center of world imperialism, the role of the state as an enforcer of the interests of the transnational corporations and as an instrument to create the most favorable conditions for capital accumulation has been enhanced in recent years. Given the growth of transnational capital and growing inter-capitalist rivalry, any other outcome would seem illogical and goes against historical experience.

At any rate, we have to strengthen our international work. Evelina, Elena, and John recently represented our Party at Party Congresses in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, and Russia. And each of them brings home the strongly held opinion that we need to do much more in this arena of struggle. Later today we will hear from Elena on Portugal and John on Russia and at our next National Board meeting we will hear Evey's report on Greece and Cyprus, where she attended a conference on globalization as well.

NEW LAY OF THE LAND

If Bush and his team had their way, they would take a page out of Reagan's playbook of 1981. Remember, Reagan came into office with no sweeping mandate that year, but that didn't deter his wrecking action on people's rights at home and abroad.

Bush and his team would like to do the same this year. Moreover, we shouldn't dismiss this possibility out of hand, as another example of political overreach, as another instance of the wish list of the extreme right going beyond the boundaries of the politically possible.

Bush's team does have some advantages that they will try to use to decisively shift the political balance of forces in their favor and impose their reactionary program. First of all, the Republicans will control the House and with Cheney having the tie breaking vote in the Senate as well. Not since the Eisenhower days has a Republican president had such an advantage in the Congress.

Second, the Supreme Court is in the pocket of extreme right wingers. Their decision to give the election to Bush blew their carefully cultivated image of impartially and immunity to partisan interests in their legal opinions. Nevertheless, don't expect this public outing of the Supreme Court to tame their zeal to make legal decisions that benefit right wing reaction.

Another advantage that Bush can count on is that most, though not all, of the mass media will be inclined to treat the new administration with kid gloves. Some of the media will act like Bush's cheerleaders. Look how they have fawned over his appointees to the cabinet. And I suspect that they will go soft on his legislative initiatives.

And finally, the extreme right has a mass constituency in our country that is organized, active, and well funded. The size and scope of this constituency is narrower than the Bush vote - substantially narrower I would argue, although this is an issue that we need to study with much greater precision.

This is one side of the political equation that will determine the direction of our country in the coming months and years.

On the other side, 2001 is not 1981. Bush is not Reagan. He enters the White House tainted and illegitimate after having lost the national popular vote and stolen the Florida vote. He brings with him no mandate to pursue, vigorously or otherwise, the policies that he espoused in the course of the election campaign. The Republican control of the House and Senate hangs on a thin thread. The American people will probably be inclined to give Bush a short honeymoon. And, most importantly, the labor and people's movement opposing Bush is far more powerful force today than it was twenty years ago.

The difference in the movement today as compared when Reagan was ruling the roost is qualitative, not quantitative; it's a difference of kind and not degree; it's a world of difference and not a shade of difference. In other words the labor and people's movements are on higher ground now.

Just consider for a moment the different level of consciousness among workers today as compared to two decades ago. Or consider the new role of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans, Native American Indians, and other oppressed peoples. Or consider the new level of activity by the women's movement and the immigrant communities. Or consider the new level of unity among all sections of the people's forces in the 2000 elections. Or consider the new readiness of masses of people to engage in one or another form of mass activity.

Thus, the balance of class and social forces are such that Bush and his team are in for tough sledding if they aggressively pursue a far reaching reactionary offensive, which it appears they intend to do.

While at this stage Bush will in all likelihood set the agenda of struggle, our task and the task of the broader movement is to begin to project an alternative legislative program, a program that will speak to the needs of millions. But it has to done skillfully.

For example, how should labor and the people's organizations respond to Bush's tax plan? Oppose it? Of course, but should they be against tax cuts in any form. I don't think so. Taxes are too high, especially the taxes on working people no matter what wage category they're in, and too low for the wealthy and rich.

I mention this single example only to get us thinking about a people's legislative program. Already the economic commission is working on a draft economic program and hopefully we can discuss it is soon.

In addition to projecting a program, we and our coalition partners have to challenge the underlying assumptions and ideas that win people to reactionary ideas and policies. It is not enough to merely counter a demand from the right with a demand from the left. That doesn't necessarily win people to our positions, especially given the new level of demagogy and deception that we can expect from this administration and its ideologues.

We have to challenge notions, such as: private is better than the public sector, trust the people not the government, a merit based system of promotion is preferable to affirmative action, workers themselves rather than their unions should decide how their dues are spent, give people choice on issues like education, social security, and health care, a producer society is superior to a transfer society, and so on.

In other words, the ideological struggle takes on a more critical character now.

PEOPLE'S MAJORITIES

Given what appears to be the governing posture of Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress, broad mass struggle and unity is the order of the day. Large people's majorities and unity are the only way to derail the reactionary Republican policies and set the stage for an anti-ultra right, anti-corporate, all people's counteroffensive. The 2002 elections are crucial but should not be a substitute for immediate and militant struggles on: tax cuts, education, social security, labor rights, Medicare, affirmative action, racial profiling, women's right to choose, election reform, immigrant and constitutional rights, the death penalty, the environment, military spending and aggression, and other issues.

At the core of this movement will be the main forces that brought tens of millions of people to the polls on Election Day. But the scope of the movement should be broader and deeper than the election 2000 coalition.

It should include the tens of millions who either voted for Gore or sat out the election for one reason or another. It should include the supporters of Nader's candidacy. It should include the young people in the anti-globalization movement. It should include the new independent political formations, like the New Party and the Greens.

It should include a section of voters who cast their ballot for Bush, but agreed with Gore on many of his main campaign issues. It should include a new approach to win supporters in rural America and the South. Given the demographic changes, the new industrial landscape, and the history of struggle in the South, there is no reason why, as the ballot struggle in Florida aptly attests to, the right wing should have a lock on this critical region of the country.

And, finally, it should include sections of the Democratic Party and even moderate and liberal Republicans. Let's face facts: to forestall Bush's legislative initiatives and pass people's legislation between now and 2002 requires that some congressional Republicans swing to the Democratic side in the House and Senate.

Thus broad and flexible tactics, enlarging our tactical and coalition sights, expanding our vision of the politically possible, finding new forms to unite broad sections of the American people, taking advantage of differences in the ruling class, and above all, fighting for broad unity is imperative now.

Bush and the extreme right are skillful at exploiting divisions along racial and gender lines, to divide the people. This was evident in the election campaign and its aftermath during which Baby Bush, imitating Daddy Bush, appealed to racist sentiments among white people.

Granted such appeals don't resonate like they did in the past, but they still influence and confuse millions. Thus we have to become more effective fighters against racism and all forms of disunity. We have to say that no one is doing anyone else a favor in this struggle for unity. We have to show that racism, male supremacy, and other divisive, ideological currents and practices are promoted by the ruling class and serves its interests only.

THE ROAD AHEAD

How quickly and on what scale the labor and people's coalitions move into action is hard to say at this moment. But recent statements by labor and people's leaders and actions planned around the King Holiday and the inauguration suggest that people's engines are re-starting after a grueling election campaign.

No doubt the appointments of Ashcroft and Chavez had a sobering effect on the broad people's movements and present an immediate opportunity to organize a broad coalition to demand the withdrawal of both appointments by Bush. We should join that effort.

We also should join actions now being planned in cites around the country on the weekend of the King holiday.

We should join with civil rights organizations and others to protest the election theft and the suppression of the vote, including participation in the march in Tallahassee.

We should participate in all the conferences scheduled for the week leading up to Inauguration day. One is in Greensboro and another is in Washington.

We should take part in the inauguration protests, sponsored by Democracy Now and the Center for Constitutional Rights. We should not cede the ground of inauguration protests to the International Action Center.

We should organize broad delegations to meet with congressional representatives either while they are on recess or after the Congressional session begins.

We should encourage teach-ins on college campuses around the country.

We should examine our relations with the whole range of organizations that were active in the recent elections. Most of them are not the same as they were. And yet our relations with them are not on the level that they should be. It would be useful to discuss in our commissions and elsewhere in the Party and YCL how to extend our relations with these mass organizations. We have to be bolder and more outward oriented.

We should explore new forms of broad unity that will give a greater programmatic and organizational coherence to this broad developing coalition. At the same time we have to appreciate that movements develop in their own way and at their own pace. Sometimes they can't be squeezed into our political and organizational molds. Our own nation's history, I would argue, suggests that.

Finally, we should examine the role of the broad left of which we are an integral part. Given present circumstances, the emphasis of the left should be on initiating struggles, injecting militancy, building unity, and projecting a program of struggle around which broad forces can unify. The left will be an effective force to the extent that it engages and works with the center. Otherwise it might as well go in hibernation for four years. The most advanced demands of the center are the grounds on which Left center unity begins and the basis for mobilizing tens of millions against the policies of the Bush administration and transnational capital. The left can't do it alone. If they could they would have done it long ago. Politics, Lenin once said, begins where there are millions.

This is far from an academic question. For among some sections of the left the absolute necessity of joining with center forces in struggle is not fully appreciated. Sometimes such a suggestion evokes a look of disdain. Not only is this harmful in a political sense, but it also leads to disappointments and eventually to cynicism. For this and other reasons we need to actively dialogue with the broad left. In this regard we are much too timid although I would add we should do it in a collective fashion.

IDEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

Before discussing the role of the Party, I want to briefly mention two ideological questions that have some bearing on present struggles and deserve some attention during the pre-convention discussion.

The Democratic Party is a capitalist controlled party. It is not a people's anti-corporate party nor do we see it evolving into one either in the short or longer term. To move the class and people's struggles to a higher stage, a labor led people's party independent of the two parties of monopoly capital is necessary.

Such a party would be able to mount a more direct and fundamental challenge of corporate power in every arena of struggle. Whether or not it sets into motion a process leading to socialism depends on many factors that we can't foresee at this moment.

This has been our position and there is no reason to depart from it. Indeed we have to give more thought and attention as to how we can keep up with the growing feeling and the new forms, especially at the local level and in the labor movement, for political independence from the two parties of capital.

At the same time, we cannot completely turn our eyes away from the two party system. Both parties, as I mentioned, are corporate controlled, but they are not identical either in their composition or policies. It is wrong to suggest that they are. Lenin remarked on many different occasions that the working class and revolutionary movement has to take advantage of divisions within the ranks of monopoly capital and its parties. He further stated that practical matters of politics couldn't be settled abstractly, but rather by making a concrete assessment of the situation.

I mention this because we would make a mistake if we simply thumbed our noses at the Democratic Party, as some on the left do. While it is dominated by big capital, it is mixed in its composition and contains different political actors, some of who we hope will eventually join an anti-monopoly people's party and some of whom we must work with if we are to successfully meet the challenge of the reactionary thrust of the Bush Administration and extreme right.

Generally speaking, we seem united on this point. It does, however, create certain tensions. First, it causes tension between some on the left who have a sneering attitude toward anyone in the Democratic Party and us. This section of the left makes no political differentiation of various people and trends among Democrats, in large part because it badly underestimates the danger from the extreme right.

Second, it causes certain tensions in our own ranks in so far as we have no simple answers as to how to work with some of the forces within the Democratic Party, while promoting political independence and combatting illusions with regard to the Democratic Party in a situation where the extreme right is the main danger.

The other ideological issue that I wanted to raise is related, that is, what is the connection between our anti-monopoly strategy and the all-people's front against the extreme right? Is our present tactical policy a detour, a diversion from our anti-monopoly strategy? Does it postpone a direct struggle against capital? Does it create illusions? Is it a retreat?

These are fair questions and I would reply "NO" to all them. Strategic and tactical policies are determined by objective and subjective factors, by the balance of political forces a