From the Managing Editors:
Let the People Vote on War!
This issue of our magazine focuses on the threat, indeed the likelihood, of war on Iraq, but also on the powerful movement that has grown up against that threat — despite the continued dampening effect of 9/11. Tom Barrett’s lead article takes a penetrating look at the question, “Why Is the Bush Administration Preparing for War Against Iraq?”
Several articles report on the major antiwar demonstrations in the U.S. in October. David Jones’s “Letter from Minnesota,” besides giving a stirring account of the St. Paul march, probes deeply into the interconnections of labor, war, and politics and raises questions about mysterious plane crashes removing antiwar leaders from the scene.
Other Editorial Board members as well
have contributed first-hand reports on antiwar actions in their areas: Maine,
California, Arizona, etc. Accompanying these reports are the texts of speeches
from those marches and rallies: by a union local officer, Phyllis Walker; by an
African American professor and activist, Julian Kunnie; and by a middle school
student, Charlotte Aldebron.
War on Two Fronts
While our magazine’s main focus is
necessarily on the Iraq war and the tremendous danger it represents for working
people (though a lucrative source of profit for Big Business), we also call
attention to the war Bush is waging against labor at home.
Not only is Bush intent on stripping
union membership rights from thousands of government workers in the new
“Department of Homeland Security,” and privatizing more than 800,000 government
jobs, but he has used the power of his office against the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), threatening them through the Defense
Department and Homeland Security, as well as through other government agencies,
even before negotiations began in June 2002. (See the ongoing coverage of this
struggle during the past half year, mainly in articles by Charles Walker that
we have carried, as the events unfolded, on
this web site.)
Then in this 55th year since the passage
of the Taft-Hartley Act, in 1947, Bush used that notorious “slave labor law”
against the ILWU. This is the first time Taft-Hartley has been used since
Democrat President Carter used it against striking coal miners in 1978. But it
is the third time Bush has invoked an anti-labor law since he stole the
presidency. Earlier he used the Railway Labor Act to stop two airline strikes
and force settlements on the workers in that industry.
On October 9, Bush imposed an 80-day “cooling
off period” under Taft-Hartley, forcing the ILWU to go to work under the threat
of government sanction after the employers had locked out the West Coast dockworkers for ten days.
This was one more blatant use of
government power to back up the corporate employers. The employers in this case
are the shipping companies and terminal owners in the Pacific Maritime
Association (PMA). The PMA also has the backing, and government lobbying
efforts, of another employers’ association — a group of giant retail
conglomerates including Wal-Mart, The Gap, Home Depot, and others who want no
interruption in the steady, massive importation through the West Coast ports of
goods produced by super-exploited labor in China and the “Pacific Rim.” They
sell those goods in their non-union stores to reap more profit from the toil
and misery of workers there and here.
The ILWU is also being targeted because
of its long tradition of militant rank-and-file unionism, international solidarity,
opposition to racism, and opposition to war. The ILWU opposed the Korean War,
the Vietnam War, U.S. intervention in Central America, and so on. No wonder the
corporations and the government they control want to damage this union.
In this issue, as ILWU members will be
voting on a proposed contract, Charles Walker examines “The Tentative Deal in
the West Coast Dock Dispute.” In view of the significance of the Taft-Hartley
“slave labor act” — or as dockworkers are calling it, the Shaft-Hartley Act —
we include a special feature in this issue: John L. Lewis’s speech against
Taft-Hartley before the convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1947
(at which the AF of L decided not to
fight adoption of Taft-Hartley, prompting Lewis to walk out of that
organization).
David Jones has written a special
introduction to Lewis’s speech, and we are printing a call for the repeal of
Taft-Hartley on the occasion of its 55th anniversary signed by Ralph Nader,
labor author Thomas Geogeghan, and three labor leaders, including Tony
Mazzocchi.
In the present issue of our magazine we
acknowledge the tremendous loss the American working class suffered with the
death of Tony Mazzocchi, national organizer of the Labor Party. Tony’s longtime
associate Dave Campbell pays tribute to the many accomplishments of this outstanding
figure in the history of U.S. labor.
This print edition also includes a
regular feature: Joe Auciello’s column “Reading from Left to Right.” This time
Joe discusses a book being promoted by the business media, a denunciation of
the Russian Revolution, a book that stands out for its abysmal ignorance, bad
writing, and trashy distortions.
One Million March Against War
The media-driven conclusion that
the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 5 represent a major turn to the right on the
part of the general public, and an endorsement of the administration’s war
policy, is false and misleading. In his
article “Midterm Mandate?” Labor Standard Editorial Board member Bill Onasch
explains: “The Democrats are not a people’s opposition party. They are a
bosses’ party presently out of office.” Their equivocations on the Iraq war
really only amounted to advice to Bush on how to make it more palatable to
Americans, hardly an inspiration to those seeking an alternative. Much more significant than the elections
were the huge marches against war in October and November.
The worldwide antiwar
demonstrations of October 26, and other actions before and since, have shown
unprecedented numbers against the Bush administration’s proposed war on Iraq.
Such opposition is bound to grow even greater in reaction to the horror, death,
and destruction that this war will bring if the much-publicized war plans are
carried through.
On Saturday, Nov. 9, in Florence, Italy,
as many as one million people, from
all over Europe, marched against war on Iraq.
The Fourth International, a worldwide
organization of labor and socialist activists, played a key role in organizing
the European Social Forum, of which this million-strong march was a part.
Even the conservative Italian government
of Berlusconi gave the figure of 450,000 — that is, nearly half a million. (See
the front-page photo in the Sunday New
York Times Nov. 10, and the story on page 14 of that paper.)
Many demonstrators were quoted as
rejecting the rigged UN Security Council resolution passed the day before. That
resolution paves the way for Bush’s war. Some said they made the trip to
Florence, from as far away as England, Russia, and Portugal, precisely because
of the Security Council resolution, which undoubtedly was obtained by the U.S.
government’s bribing and arm-twisting to get the vote it wanted.
Earlier, on Sunday, Nov. 3, there was a
large march and rally on the Boston Commons against war on Iraq. The student
newspaper Harvard Crimson reported
25,000, including many students, but the more properly Bostonian Boston Globe conceded “only” 15,000.
Let the People Vote on War
It’s widely reported that in early
October phone calls and other messages to senators and representatives were
overwhelmingly opposed to war. Yet the majority of these capitalist
politicians — including most of the Democrat Party leadership (Lieberman,
Daschle, Gephardt, Hillary Clinton) — voted for a resolution giving Bush a
blank check for war.
In the midterm elections the issue was
obscured because both major parties support war. Poor and working class voters
stayed away in droves. This is especially because many working class and
minority voters see little being offered to them by any of the politicians.
If the working class majority could have
a straightforward, clear-cut vote on the question of war, and on other vital
issues of concern, such as health care, their turnout would surely be far
greater than for elections where the choice is between pro-corporate “brown and
beige,” as one commentator put it.
On the question of war, opinion polls,
for all their distorted recording, have reflected a majority sentiment against
unilateral, preemptive war. (See Tom Barrett’s article for a summary of recent
poll results.)
In this context it’s appropriate to
revive a demand that first appeared in the 1930s: Let the People Vote on War.
In 1937, Indiana Representative Louis
Ludlow proposed a constitutional amendment requiring a nationwide referendum
before the United States could go to war. The Ludlow Amendment was rejected by
Congress on the advice of President Franklin Roosevelt, who, even then, was
maneuvering to get the U.S. into the war that he knew was coming. Right through
1941, polls showed 80 percent opposition to American involvement. Only after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did U.S. entry into World War II become
politically possible.
In the 1930s, revolutionary socialists
gave critical support to the idea embodied in the Ludlow Amendment. You can
read more about this question in the book Transitional
Program for Socialist Revolution (2d ed., New York, 1974). The powers that
be will have their war if they want it, regardless of public sentiment, but a
referendum would allow the working class majority to express their opposition,
and that in turn helps mobilize and encourage workers and their allies in the
population to take action to stop war.
In Dearborn, Michigan, in 1966, just one
year after Lyndon B. Johnson’s major escalation of U.S. intervention into the
civil war in South Vietnam, a referendum was placed on the ballot stating: “Are
you in favor of an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Vietnam so the Vietnamese people can settle their own affairs?”
Even at that early stage of the struggle
against the war, over 40 percent of those voting indicated deep reservations
about the growing GI casualty list. (The Dearborn vote was 14,124 in favor and
20,667 against.) For the antiwar movement the strong antiwar vote bolstered
their contention that concern about the escalating conflict was not confined
only to students and traditional pacifists.
Other referenda held later during the
Vietnam War showed a majority against the war, for example, in Massachusetts in
1970. (See the sidebar on this page.)
In addition to the referenda, many local
government bodies passed resolutions against the war. But it was primarily the
mass demonstrations in the streets that expressed and gave driving energy to
the constantly increasing opposition to war. By 1972–73, the overwhelming
sentiment of the U.S. population against the Vietnam War forced the government
finally to get out.
Today, the ANSWER coalition, which
called the October 26 demonstrations, has proposed a vote on the war against
Iraq, using the Internet. (To vote, click
here. ) The coalition plans
to publicize the results of this vote at an upcoming antiwar conference. (See
the ANSWER web site.) It has also called for demonstrations in Washington,
D.C., on January 18–19, around Martin Luther King’s birthday.
Of even more significance, some voices
in the labor movement are calling for a discussion and debate in the unions,
with votes being taken to show where the organizations of the working class
stand on this question. Even AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has called for
“public debate” on the proposed war. (See Charles Walker’s article “Sweeney
Faces Opposition on War Policy.”)
Why shouldn’t the people vote on war?
The people pay for it, and the people have to fight it. War creates demands for
holding the line on wage increases, while inflation, stimulated by war
production, erodes wages in every paycheck. The people send their sons — and
since the Gulf war, their daughters — to fight and die in foreign lands.
Most of the general public has no
sources of information other than the capitalist media, parroting the
administration’s war hysteria. The drumbeat of propaganda about Iraq’s alleged
chemical, biological, and nuclear war capabilities has disturbed many. While
these fears give some plausibility to the administration’s war propaganda, they
are also germinating significant currents of hesitation beyond the conscious
and active antiwar opposition.
Workers Party Victory in Brazil Elections
In Brazil at the end of October,
the working class majority, the landless peasants, the urban poor, and their allies
among students, intellectuals, professionals, and so on, had the union-based
Workers Party to vote for, with its record of decades of militant struggle
against the extreme inequalities of the status quo. In a great outpouring, the
masses gave the largest majority ever (over 60 percent) to the presidential
candidate of the Workers Party, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.
In this case the workers, the peasants,
and the poor believed they had something to vote for. Someone who represented
them. A machinist, a trade unionist, who had been poor and exploited for much
of his life, just like them. A man who had led strikes that helped force an end
to Brazil’s military dictatorship. A man who opposes the neoliberal policies of
the past decades and opposes Washington’s plan for a Free Trade Area of the
Americas.
What Lula and the Workers Party will
actually do is not yet decided. Whether they will take forceful steps to
improve the lives of those who voted for them depends on many factors. The fact
that Lula chose a capitalist politician as his vice presidential running mate —
to reassure the ruling classes in Brazil and elsewhere, especially in the
superpower United States, that he intended no fundamental challenge to the
existing capitalist system — does not bode well. (We will have detailed reports
and analysis on the Brazilian election and its aftermath on our web site and in our next print edition.)