Original draft posted May 31, 2005

A Working Class Strategy To Win The Battle of Democracy:

A Red-Green-Blue Electoral Alliance

by Lil Joe

Snip: "That support is evident at the Old Labor Hall in Barre. "He is as good as they
come," says Sue Lucas, a nurse in Morrisville. "He is about everything we believe in."

"He is not afraid to stand up to either party," said Jim Genovesi, a worker for an
electric utility in Rutland. "He doesn't seem to be affected by political pressure or
lobbyist pressure. He stands his ground."

"Sanders' booming voice fills the hall as he nears the end of his speech. "We know that
our opponents have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that they put
into the political process. We know they control much of the media. We know they
have an attack machine that goes from Fox to Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report and
all over the place.

"We know that is what THEY have," his voice thunders.

"But there is one thing they do not have. They do not have ordinary people prepared to
knock on doors and organize all over America. "That is what WE have.

"They have the money. We have the people.

"And when push comes to shove, the people are going to defeat the money."

See: Socialist Leads U.S. Senate Race in Vermont for entire article

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Lil Joe Comment: Of course, 'ordinary people' versus the rich folk is not a clear statement of partisan working class socialist politics. It is populism bordering on demagogy, but in America, for a successful populist running as an open 'socialist' in independent campaign races, beating Democrats as well as Republicans, is very significant. Sander's successes in House races, which aren't as expensive as Senate races, shows to the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and to the Labor Party activists that it can be done.

Rather than Greens, Socialists and Communists spreading money and resources running of symbolic --- so-called "educational" candidates for President, Governors, the US and State Senate, with no chance of winning those races --- it is demonstrated by this maverick Congressman, Bernie Sanders, that we can in fact win seats to the House of Representatives.

Suppose the Green, Peace and Freedom, socialists, and Labor Party organizations collaborate in elections, an electoral united front forum, to run candidates in, say, ten of the industrialized "Blue States", where the urban working classes and minorities have their social power base. To run in Congressional Districts in 2008.

Following the example of Bernie Sanders; rather than wasting money and people power in symbolic campaigns for 'President', instead, spend their finances and resources including human power in these ten winnable Congressional Districts; in Districts with a favorable Green candidate the Labor and P&F party activists would support the Green -- in Districts where the P&F candidates are strong the Green and Labor activists would support the P&F candidate, and so on. If we can force the Labor Party to stand candidates in those districts, the Greens, Peace and Freedom, socialists and other radical activists will support the Labor candidate.

This electoral united front at the polls could continue as these freshmen congress persons will be a Red-Green-Labor alliance that could then work together in Congress. The task of revolutionary socialists in the House, whichever Party formation they are part of, would be to constantly put forth transitional demands in the forms of Congressional legislation that would be constantly challenging the Republicans, and by driving the Conservative Party - the Democrats, into an open block with the Reactionary Party - the Republicans, clearly on class-based legislative issues.

This would eliminate - or at any rate drive the demagogues to subordinate and depoliticize - the pseudo political issues of stem cell research, abortion, school prayer, gay marriage, affirmative action, flag burning, and so on. These kinds of divisive issues are the creations of demagogues, which enable them to set workers against each other.

Whereas, the racial, gender, and religious flame wars that are deliberately created by Democratic and Republican party politicians and propagandists will be sublated in the presentation of a class based approach, such as legislating the elimination of the Taft-Hartley legislation, a living wage based on union scale or median income, reduction of the working day from 8+ hours to a 6 hour day at a living wage, which would outlaw overtime and force capitalists to hire the unemployed, open enrollment of colleges with free education for all, housing for all, as well as food for all.

These are the kinds of legislation that will win workers over to our Party, the parties that represent the interests of workers, regardless of race and gender, religion or sex orientation. If a woman wants to go full term pregnancy, she has that right, including legislation that would guarantee her 6 months paid pregnancy leave. On the other hand, if a woman wants to have an abortion, that is her right as well and to have it performed by a doctor of her choice free on the same legislated health plan. Such pragmatic concerns, in pragmatic America, would negate ideological hostilities between women by a pro-working class woman legislature.

As to the "issue" of "gay marriage" - or any other form of ritualized marriage, e.g. bigamy, polygamy, polyandry - marriage or the lack thereof in these instances are a purely religious matter. Christianity is Biblically commanded by Saint Paul to monogamy; the Judaic Scriptures, the Qu'ran and the Mormon's Bible does not make this law; but, while these books accept polygamy, they do not accept promiscuity - adultery is a religious category. Prostitution is also a consequence of religious condemnation of adultery, and should be made legal, along with promiscuity of both teenagers as well as the 18 years and older.

Those who are non-religious do not have to abide by the "traditional values" and "family values" of those who are religious. This, in other words, would be legislation under the rubric of Separation of State and Church. Christian politicians have no more Constitutional authority to force Mormons and Muslims to become monogamous by making Polygamy a crime, than would Mormons or Muslims to force Christians to become polygamous.

The separation of Church and State protects the Christian denominations, the same as it protects other religions, from gaining political power and using that power to intervene in Christian religious affairs. With this, I say, not as a proposal but only as an opinion, gay marriage can be refused by Churches whose doctrines oppose it, but they can start their own Church and marry according to their own understanding of Scripture. Nevertheless, if certain Churches perform gay marriage ceremonies, it is up to those Church authorities, and not the State, to declare those marriages illegal.

I think that Christians could live with this understanding of legislation re-asserting the separation of Church from State, in opposition to the demagogic Republicans and their religious ideologists' wet-eyed performances on the necessity to propose Constitutional Amendments that declare legal only monogamy. They say that, in their Bible, "God made Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve". It is true, that fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims believe the Book of Genesis to be the recorded history of humanity, and the 10 Commandments the basis of law. But, this is relevant and true to them, and to them only.

The Ten Commandments, for instance, were given together with hundreds of other laws, codes and rituals in the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers, to the federation of 12 Bedouin Hebrew tribes. It is adopted by Christianity and Islam in the New Testament and the Qu'ran, respectively. But, there are billions of people on Earth, who are neither Jews, Christians or Muslims, and in this country there are tens of millions who are not religious, and these beliefs and rituals do not apply to these billions of people who don't believe that "Jehovah made Adam and Eve", and not "Adam and Steve". To force legislate patriarchal monogamy and the laws of Moses concerning adultery as a Constitutional Amendment is clearly an intervention by State Power into religious affairs. Also, on the other hand, the presence of the religious text in Congress, upon which members of Congress must swear loyalty to the Constitution, is a religious artifact and ritual which should be removed.

These are just some of the political issues and arguments that can be made by working class and green forces in the House of Representatives, which inevitably will drive the Democratic Party Conservatives into the camp of the Republican Party Reactionaries, because, in the last analysis, Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Reactionaries, represent the same interests, the interests of capital against labor, of imperialism against national liberation and resistance movements in the 3rd world.

The real difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that the Democrats represent the interests of domestic industrial capitalism, while the Republican Party, on the contrary, represents finance capital and transnational capitalists. They are factions of the same ruling class. The Democrats, as the nationalist faction, control the workers' unions that work for them, promote tariffs and duties, and denounce "sweat shop slavery in 'communist China'". The American working classes must learn this from their own experience, by observation and analysis, which would be provided to them on CSPAN (while it lasts!) were there working class partisans in the House of Representatives putting forward a working class agenda, clashing with the capitalist class parties.

Exposing the Democrats as nothing but capitalist political partisans masquerading in liberal costume, spewing 'progressive' jive, is one of the tasks of labor deputies in Congress. Newt Gingrich showed America that an aggressive, self-confident new crew of activist politicians, that are actually running to win offices in the House of Representatives for the first time, can both win first time elections and, in Congress, pose a formidable challenge to the old guard of both parties.

If Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee are serious about representing the interests of ethnic working class minorities, then they could prove it by resigning from the Democratic Party and coming over to the Red-Green alliance as independents, if not joining the Labor, Green, or Peace and Freedom Party, and running as such when their re-election comes to term. If they don't, then they will be exposed as just Democrats, representative of capital and the party of war.

By repeatedly winning elections as an independent candidate and open socialist, maverick Bernie Sanders has demonstrated again and again that the American working class is ready to hear class struggle socialist ideas and work to elect socialists representative of workers issues as such in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As technology and robotics exponentially increases labor productivity, this provides both an objective measure and argument for the reduction of the working day to 6 hours. The exponential profits that capitalists have derived from the exploitation of those workers provides an objective basis and argument for this reduction of socially necessary labor time in production that can occur without decreasing the paychecks of workers.

When capitalists and their politicians and propagandists in the media use patriotic rationales, it is usually as a last refuge for these scoundrels to manipulate workers into accepting pay cuts, or go to fight in an imperialist war - in the name of "American vital interests" - but, these scoundrels never say what those interests are, or define "American values". But, we can turn these patriotic claptrap sound bites back on them. When, for instance, in response to labor legislation reducing the working day and establishing living wage stability, we demand that they show some "patriotism" and meet the legislation demands, rather than outsourcing or laying off (i.e. firing) workers.

It could further be legislated that any capitalist that tries to outsource or relocate, claim bankruptcy or close down the factory, be expropriated by the workforce at the national level, and production and management be assumed by the workers themselves, as workers have proved this can work in Argentina where shut down shops were expropriated, reopened, and are now profitably run by workers. A Labor Party-dominated House of Representatives, together with Green Party and Peace and Freedom Party allies in the House, could, legislate anything they want to.

In Congress, and thereby on CSPAN, with millions of workers tuned in, our representatives of labor and social conscience could put the Democrats and Republican parties claptrap about "family values" to the test, by demanding that they vote affirmative to legislation directing the expropriation of corporations that threaten or attempt to outsource or shut down production as a means of disciplining pragmatic union officials to back down and capitulate. But, be that as it may, by the subsumption of unions into the Labor Party, the interests of individual unions are sublimated into the class interests of all workers.

The theory and practice of pragmatic trade unionism has tied the American trade unions to the capitalist State, to the government, because the union bureaucracy is interconnected with the Democratic Party, are its foot soldiers. This tie has to be cut, by means of the Labor Party entering union elections and displacing representatives of the Democratic Party who run these unions in the interests of capital, which is what the Democratic Party represents, by displacing these class collaborators with labor activists in union with the Labor Party, supporting Labor Party candidates for the House of Representatives. These unions have the money to finance and win such elections. These candidates would not accept any campaign contributions from capitalist lobbyists or any philanthropic foundations.

The fact that Sanders, as an open socialist, but more importantly as an independent, consistently denounces the Democrats as well as the Republicans, and is attacked by the Democratic Party "progressives", has shown that the American workers are quite capable of breaking with the Democrats, and voting in their class interests. The Labor Party, which is financially and organizationally based on trade unions, must become a true class party by revitalizing the organizing of the working-class into politically partisan trade unions, both throwing the present leadership of Democrats out of the leadership of the unions, and by organizing the unorganized, those single moms thrown off public assistance by the Clinton Democrats, and the undocumented immigrants.

Americans workers and voters should be held accountable for those whom they campaign for, and vote for. They can no longer be excused for campaigning and voting for a member of Congress, or for the President, on the basis of fear, greed or the pragmatism of the lesser evil, to then disassociate themselves from the policies the Congresspersons and President enact. The era of supposed innocence is lost, since this pragmatic lesser evil ritual has repeated itself over and over again. This means that American's know what they are doing when they elect these politicians.

Yes, it is difficult to stand on principle against conventional wisdom and the demagogic populism, manipulating the masses into reactionary politics. But, just as there are some who do so in any case, there are principled people, inevitably critical thinkers. But, the rub is how to bring the masses of the American working classes into this process of class struggle praxis - viz: engender practical-critical, revolutionary thinking. It can be done only if the politically class-conscious workers, whether as independents, socialists, Greens, communists, Peace and Freedom Party, or Labor Party formation, canvass working class districts and union halls, campaigning on the basis of the pragmatism of a transitional legislative program to be proposed to Congress were their Party or person to win seats in the House of Representatives.

The antinomy of the pragmatism of the labor partisans confronts the pragmatism of the bourgeois parties. The main argument is the reduction of the working day with no cut in pay, but in fact, the legislation with this hours-reduction bill will include a living wage clause, based on union scale.

This will bring all the workers together, as workers, eliminating fear of displacement, and ending unemployment. It will be for the working class partisan members of Congress to explain this to the working classes, to the minorities, and to the unemployed, both by fighting for these and other labor legislation in the House of Representatives and Committee hearings, and at town halls held in union halls and schools in working-class neighborhoods. These workers must be made to see and feel that when our party's labor legislation passes, that it is their victory, that they must come to feel their power by experiencing class victories.

Every worker in the United States, whether born here or not, either "legal" or "illegal", should be granted immediate citizenship with all rights and privileges. This should be the perspective of a politically partisan trade union movement, bringing into these unions class conscious workers from Central America and Mexico who already know about class struggle and socialism. This will be transformative praxis of the labor movement in its revitalization by politically bringing the millions of new workers into the working class parties and defending their human and labor rights as the Labor Party defines them, through legislation in the House of Representatives.

Because it is the creative labor of workers in production in the United States that has the capacity to generate fresh wealth, and the socio-political power based in these economic relations of production to shut this country down in strikes, and by general strikes if necessary, a Labor dominated House of Representatives, in alliance with Greens and Peace and Freedom Congressmen and women, will have the power to legislate anything they want to, including legislation passing the nation's natural resources and productive forces and financial institutions from the private possession of a few thousand capitalist's to the public property of the hundreds of millions of the working class. This is the true meaning of workers as a class winning the battle of democracy. If the Senate and the President, or/and the Supreme Court, use their bourgeois authority in the Constitution to suppress this legislation, the workers have the power of the strike and of mass mobilizations, demonstrations, pickets and other means of struggle. The point is to bring the workers into the streets, including the most conservative and politically and ideologically backward, so that they can experience and feel their class power derived from class unity.

During the English Revolution when the House of Commons had the authority and finances to appeal to the peasants and artisans who were the rank and file in the king's army serving under hated lords, the kin'g troops went over to the Commons, and Oliver Cromwell organized the revolutionary army to win the civil war that followed. Similarly, the American Continental Congress used its authority to declare US independence, and British colonial soldiers - including George Washington and Benedict Arnold - split from the crown and fought and won a civil war with the backing of France and Germany.

The Pentagon has power, without legislative authority. The officers come from the American ruling classes by way of exclusive military academies such as the overwhelming majority at West Point. The officers who order the grunts to shoot to kill workers on strikes or minority uprisings, are the sons and daughters of the parents who own the businesses these grunt's parents and relatives work for, and of finance capitalists which own the mortgages and cars their families live in and commute by.

When, as in the French Revolution, the entry of the masses as signified by the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789 and the February Russian Revolution in 1917, the toiling masses in the ranks of the military refused to obey order's to fire on the "unruly mobs" of "rioters" and "thugs", but, instead, joined those Revolutions and came to support with arms the revolutionary government - the National Constituent Assembly in France, and the National Assembly in Russia. The more class-aware workers and oppressed peasants in these armed forces went over to the Soviets of Worker's, Peasant's, Soldier's and Sailor's Deputies. In both these Revolutions, the revolutionary masses of the rank and file fought civil wars against the officer corps and cadets, and against foreign interventionists who wanted to crush those revolutions and restore the ancient regimes.

This perspective and opinion will be formed as a result of years of struggles in Congress, after labor's representatives will have argued on C- SPAN, bringing the support of unions, greens, working class to endorse and support these legislations. Once passed, if this labor legislation is struck down - killed by the Senate, vetoed by the President, or ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court - the same authority could be used to abolish the capitalist-dominated Senate, and Presidency.

Having won authority from the voters, and seen as their legitimate parliament by the class-aware American workers, the House of Representatives will have the backing of the majority in it's abolition and throwing out of power of the Senate, Presidency and the courts and the Constitution upon which their class power resides. The Constitution is a document written by capitalists, slave owners, merchants and bankers, behind closed doors against the workers and farmers - e.g. to legitimize suppression of revolts, such as the Shays Rebellion led by Daniel Shay, in the name of "restoring domestic tranquility".

To "form a more perfect union", They, The Ruling Class, wrote a Constitution which would give them a federal army to back their interests, including establishing a government intended to give the masses a semblance of power in the form of the House of Representatives, while the representatives from their class dominated both the federal and state Senates, the Presidency, and all state governorships, as well as a military officer corp selected from their class, by appointment.

It will undoubtedly take years, perhaps a decade or so, of actual class combat in the House of Representatives to drive the Democrats and Republicans together from the House and into the Senate. Once the Democrats are exposed and ejected, the class struggle in its political form will take place as a war between the proletarian-dominated House of Representatives and the capitalist -dominated Senate the Presidency and the Courts, and the American working class will achieve the class awareness that these institutions, and the Constitution which authorizes them, are repressive institutions. The workers will come to recognise that the Senate does not represent the political/economic goals of the state constituencies which voted for them, and is an illusion provided by school text books - lying propaganda. The Senate represents the national interests of the capitalist class - it isn't accidental that nearly all of the US Senators, and Presidents, are millionaires.

As the commoners represented in the English House of Commons had to abolish the English House of Lords to abolish the Monarchy; the American Colonial Constitutional Convention had to declare independence from British mercantilism; the French 3rd Estate, to abolish the Estates General, and create the National Constituent Assembly; and the Russian Constituent Assembly created a Republic, abolishing Tsarist government, so subsequently the Soviet's of Workers and Peasants to abolish that bourgeois Assembly. In each of these cases the masses were drawn into the political struggle – in the cases of the English and French Revolutions, and first phrase of the Russian Revolution, the workers and peasants fought not their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies.

But then, as these revolutions played out, the working classes and toiling masses, especially those in the cities of London, Paris, St.Petersburg and Moscow, came to have and be of a mind of their own – the Levelers and Diggers in London led by Gaard Winstanley, the Sans Culottes and the Commune of Paris, represented by the Jacobins, led by Saint Just, Jean-Paul Marat and Maximilian Robespierre, and finally Gracchus Babeuf's "Conspiracy of Equals". In Moscow and St. Petersburg the Russian Revolutionaries were representing themselves in Soviets, where they elected Bolsheviks, which, led by Lenin and Trotsky, later took state power and disbanned the bourgeois Constituents Assembly.

Similarly in America, the Democratic Party brings into the political electoral arena the working classes and minorities. In campaigning for the Democrats, with trade unions acting as lobbyists for the future winning of office, by donating money, publicity and marshaling troops to go door to door in electoral districts on behalf of the Democratic candidates, these workers are not fighting their enemies, but the enemy of their enemies, the Republicans!

Yet, as in the cases of the English, French and Russian Revolutions, in times of economic breakdowns and corresponding political crisis, the American workers are also brought into the political fervor and engage in practical critical thinking that could lead to class awareness in the Socialist sense, to have and become a mind and will of their own fighting for their own class self-interests against the Democratic as well as the Republican parties.

However, this will happen in the United States – particularly in the industrial so-called Blue States, and the working class districts in so-called Red State cities – only if for the next decade or so the the American Labor Party and its allies in the Green and Peace and Freedom Party, together with socialist and communist groups, campaign in working class states and cities for election to the House of Representatives, and emerge as the majority through ruthless criticisms of Democrats as well as Republicans when they oppose working class legislation as "special interests".

These debates will bring workers to the recognition that the Democratic and Republican parties, notwithstanding their opposition to "special interests", do in fact represent the special interests of the classes that own the productive forces, lands and houses, banks and mortgages. The issue isn't about income but wealth – not the amount of money made, which the Democratic Party demagogues trot-out to present themselves as representing the "little guy", but primarily an issue of quality of income (wages, profits, interests, rent) and not of quantity.

In his article, "Wealth, Income and Power", in 2006, G. William Domhoff wrote:

Generally speaking, "wealth" is the value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts. However, for purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person's net worth. In addition, economists use the concept of financial wealth, which is defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing. As Wolff (2004, p. 5) explains, "Financial wealth is a more 'liquid' concept than marketable wealth, since one's home is difficult to convert into cash in the short term. It thus reflects the resources that may be immediately available for consumption or various forms of investments."

We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income is what people earn from wages, dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income.

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%. In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Labor Party candidates and their supporters have to live in the district and need to canvas those working class congressional districts with the thoroughness of Jehovah Witnesses. Campaign workers need to go from house to house, and apartment to apartment to argue with the workers and their families for the need to have members of their own class as Congressional representatives.

Visiting these working class families, they need to have access to the literature on the relevant campaign issues, from a Labor, Green and socialist perspective. In the United States, pragmatism is in the culture, which elevated the practical to the level of principle and anti-theory. This has to be taken into consideration as the candidates and their teams respectively visit homes of workers of the respective congressional district.

In the United States' present political culture, everyone who is principled and has a theoretical understanding underlying their objectives are called "fanatics" and "extremists". Yet, Americans, including workers, notwithstanding their pragmatism and assumed opposition to "special interests", do in fact regard politics as "practical". It is in part addressing the pragmatism socialized into the American psyche, by upbringing and education, that Labor, Green and other candidates in the electoral united front can present their candidates as practical alternatives to the capitalist class parties.

Community meetings must be organized and set up in the American tradition that goes back to Town Hall gatherings. The candidates and their supporters have to make sure that the people they talk to get there and bring others, by telephone calls, email reminders, and even by providing transportation. These meeting will not be contemporary demagogic sessions of bullshitting the audience, about how great one's candidacy is. The bullshit must also be exposed in debates with members of the audience, e.g., concerning whether or not the candidate is a man, woman, white or black, and whether or not he or she is a "Christian", supports Israel, believes in abortion or is anti-abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the American bourgeois republic, English language as the only language, and other irrelevancies.

Rather the opposite. By not capitulating to this political backwardness and demagogic manipulation of the voters, the working class candidates are in these town halls to debate with the audience, and to show these workers that these issues are raised by the capitalist party, which has created and used these pseudo-issues to divert workers attention, their consciousness, from fundamental class issues, such as which class owns the productive forces and does not work, and which class does work because they don't own those productive forces.

It is better to be principled and thus debate the audience and loose an election round one, than to be a pragmatic opportunist who capitulates to this backward bourgeois consciousness and demagogy of bourgeois politicians, even if otherwise it meant winning. Winning isn't everything, principles is the only thing.

It is based on principles and the possibility of argument of those principles that the working class candidates, and their allies, are running to win seats in Congress in the first place: to argue in the town halls against the workers who are pragmatic Democrats, and to be in Congress presenting and arguing for a working class agenda, that is also a green agenda and an agenda of peace in international relations. This is what the workers will vote for, or not.

By presenting and fighting in town halls and in Congress, pushing an agenda of working class "special interests", is to advance the interests of all of humanity, which are free of nationality.

Worker, Green, Peace and Freedom, Communist Party, Committee of Correspondence, Socialist Labor Party, Socialist Worker's Party, Black Radical Congress, Freedom Socialist Party, Progressive Labor Party, Sparticist League, International Socialists Organization, and other parties and groups, can, without violating their respective principles, form an electoral alliance, a United Front, based on promoting and advancing the special interests of the working classes, minorities and women to eliminate overwork, poverty, environmental degradation and war.

There is no violation of principle because each group can select their respective Congressional district to field candidates, based on having a member/s who lives there. In their particular campaigns, these groups will have the exclusive right to run candidates as they see fit, and present their own literature. The members of these groups in the House of Representatives will also be free to present their own group's perspectives and arguments advancing their conception of a working-class agenda legislation, minority and women legislation on a working class basis and platform, their respective green agenda, and will be free to fight each other.

This is what is meant by organizations having political independence in a united front, no party or group is muzzled and booed, only respect and arguments prevail. What unites them is their participation in electoral politics to bright the working class to power, here in the U.S.A.


This can be done in our lifetime. Bernie Sanders' re-elections have demonstrated the possibility of open socialists winning seats in the House of Representatives, and now having won a seat in the Senate in a state-wide election.

Of course, the existing bureaucratic-military state apparatus has to be legislated out of existence, replaced by a management administration of things in the interests of the working classes and toiling masses of America. Displacement of the military state by worker's armed militias, associated with trade unions, ethnic minorities, environmentalists and at the disposal of the new government in case a capitalist initiated war breaks out against the working class. In the context of this radical transformation of American politics it will of course be necessary to call a New Constitutional Convention attended by workers, farmers and representatives of ethnic minorities, and broadcast every day on television.

From the generation of the 60's radicals there are individuals who have given up on revolution, but still retain a degree of political consciousness that are being hustled by Democrats - Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore, Al Frankin, "Truth Out", Air America - and represent an politico-ideological faction of the Democrats. Because they don't directly hold office as Democrats, they masquerade as being independent of the party.

But, existing millions of this 60's generation are the same base in the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, Nadar's sphere and the Labor Party.

Yet, perhaps inadvertently, the present orientation of the Green, Peace and Freedom, socialist and communist parties, - the running of symbolic, also called educational, campaigns for President/Vice President every four years with little intention of winning those presidential elections - wastes time, cadres and money by putting all their political eggs in one election basket.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party play musical chairs every election year. It is primarily a means of releasing the tension within the working class, by ostensibly staging revolutions by elections: "throwing the bums out".

Their parties, however, are but two sides of the politically-dominant Party of Capital. The Party of Capital is represented by the Republican Party Congressional majority at one time, and then the Democrats as Party majority at another, soon the Republicans are back, but nonetheless the material interests of Capital's representatives dominate this game of Congressional musical players because the Democrats and Republicans are the only parties that run for, and therefore win, voters and elections.

These Democratic and Republican Congressional musical chair displacements have been working for nearly two centuries. The American Socialist Party, represented by Eugene Debs, set the stage of the American left's political participation in American electoral politics. He ran for the office of president, and won over a million votes. Since then, Americans have emulated Debs, repeating their respective presidential candidates, every four years. They never win.

Though these "Presidential candidates" get a bit of coverage on capitalist-owned and State-owned media, the masses of the American working classes know nothing of them. Those that do consider a "Third Party" vote as either a "protest vote" or a "wasted" vote.

So, consider the alternative: selecting specific districts in campaigns, the parties in question form electoral united fronts, spend their financial and human resources for months convincing the districts constituency, knocking on doors, meeting in public institutions, running lengthy television adds, all in say, ten to twenty "Blue States" in working class Congressional Districts, all directed at actually winning seats in the House of Representatives.

The issues inevitably raised by the Democrats that Green, Peace and Freedom, and Labor Party candidates - so-called "3rd Party" candidates - are "taking away votes from the Democrats", and leaving space for the "racist" and "fascist" Republicans, can be answered by presenting data - not demagogy - to prove that the Democratic and the Republican Parties represent the vital interests of the Ruling classes. It must be shown on the basis of documentation that the respective and collective histories of the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has been a history of anti-labor legislation, racism, anti-communist legislation, environmental degradation, and imperialist wars.

When those workers in the targeted Congressional districts vote for candidates which comprise this electoral united front, they will not receive votes because they are "cute" or "pretty" woman - nor even because they are women - "handsome" men, Black, white, Brown, "charismatic" [read: demagogic] and other such manipulative and mesmerizing American bourgeois cultural traits, but because of knowledgeable, general agreement with the social and environmental analysis and political program of these candidates.

Instead of Green, Peace and Freedom, socialist and communist parties running seperate, fatalist grandiose campaigns for President, these campaigners can actually win if they focused their money, political and literary skills, footwork and doorbell-ringing campaigns, at displacing Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives. Otherwise, they don't stand a snowflake's chance in hell of being selected President by the Electoral College.

But, even if by some miracle a Green or Peace and Freedom candidate did manage to win the popular vote his or her cabinet officers and federal judge appointment and diplomats would have to be approved by the Senate. Since every member of the Senate, Presidency and Cabinet, professional career bureaucrat in every branch of government, every federal and state judge, every state governor and government body, county and city government, and every member of the officers in the armed forces are Democrats or Republicans, what will a Green or Peace and Freedom Party president do if by some miracle they were selected by the Electoral College?

I am not clairvoyant; I don't know if the "Third Party" candidates have delusions of grandeur, or consciously want to protect Democrats and Republican domination of Congress, but this is what they are objectively doing. By Greens, Peace and Freedom Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, the Communist Party U.S.A., and smaller groups running impossible campaigns for president, rather than focusing all their resources on winnable campaigns for the House of Representatives, the Democrats and Republicans are guaranteed to continue to monopolize legislative powers, completely unchallenged, as the only members of Congress.

Consequently, without having representatives from their own class running for Seats in the House of Representatives, when the American workers get fed up with the Democrats in the Congress, they vote Republican, as with the Newt Gingrich "Contract with America" factional Republican Party displacing the Democrats. Then, ten years later, the Republicans are defeated and the Democrats become the majority - doing the same thing the Republicans did. When the workers are fed-up, and become critical of the capitalist Party in power, instead of now again voting the other capitalist faction from minority to majority, this ritual can be broken forever by Peace and Freedom, Green, socialist and communist victories, winning seats displacing both.

The same people that would vote for a Bernie Sanders or a Barbara Lee are the one's who register 'protest votes' for Third Party Presidential candidates. They are targeted and conned by Democrat "progressives" and their non-party entourages to vote for "lesser evil" Democrats to 'check' the Republican 'fascist' President in office. These are the very people who could be targeted by serious winnable Green, Peace and Freedom and Labor Party congressional candidates -- giving working people an opportunity of voting for something for a change, rather than against someone.

Finally, in the 60s, Blacks, feminists and socialists were not moralists interested in "closing the gap between rich and poor", or preserving Social Security under capitalism, by making the super-rich pay their 'fair share of taxes'. The Black liberation movement, the anti-war movement, and the socialist and communist leaders in these movements were fighting to ending capitalism.

But, seems the radicals of the 60s have become the complacent conservatives of today. So long as socialists and class conscious American workers say that coming to power, i.e. winning the battle of democracy 'can't be done in our lifetime', it won't be done in our lifetime; and this shit will go on generation after generation, until one generation says: "fuck it, we've had enough of this shit! We're taking matters into our own capable hands!" Kulu Se Mama!

We said it in the 60s: "Power to the People" and "the People, United, Will never be defeated". But we were defeated - in part because of our youthfulness which put us outside the power structures controlled by 'adults', but more importantly because we didn't have a strategy to win the battle for democracy consistent with American traditions and political values. So, we were alienated from the majority of blue-collar workers and we denounced them as 'hard hats', 'racists', 'corrupt', 'privileged imperialists' and so on; and Nixon, then Reagan, mobilized them into hard nosed reactionaries against us.

But, today, the individuals of the reactionary generation, which was "over thirty" in the 60's -70's, are dying if not already dead. The tens of millions of 60's activists are today parents and grandparents ready to retire. What are you going to do with your free time, other than anti-war protests and email polemics? Lets get back into the streets and finish what we've started! We were committed to turning the world over to our children and grandchildren freer and better than when we were born into it. Our objective was not to "speak truth to power", but to take state power!

Our American Revolution will be more like the English Revolution of 1640, where the lower house, the House of Commons, representing the masses as well as finance, confronted the House of Lords and Royalty, displaced them, declared a Republic and executed the king; or, the Great French Revolution wherein the masses represented by the 3rd Estate supported that Estate's dissolution of the Estates-General that had been dominated by the 1st and 2nd Estates representing the high clergy and landed nobility, declared a republican National Constituent Assembly, leading to a Convention and radical Committee of Public Safety during the people's terror and by that terror the destruction of feudalism and royalty.

We can win the battle of democracy by winning the majority in the lower house, the House of Representatives, because being more geographically and financially accessible to working class and ethnic minorities (the people), the slogan of the 60's: "Power to the People" can become an actuality in our lifetime.

The main problem in the 60's was that the radical youth didn't have a strategy for winning state power by incrementally winning the battle of democracy, and with this, the transition of qualitative changes from a society dominated by capital to one dominated by labor. Let's win this battle of democracy, by first winning the majority seats in the House of Representatives, openly as Green, Peace and Freedom and Labor Party activists. Bernie Sanders proves that we can do it.

There is a need here for the American working classes to go to the extremes of radical critiques - to be 'radical' is to reach the roots of being and thinking, to the recognition that the source of all working classes misery is that they are deprived by the landed, financial and landowning classes.

The class based critical thinking praxis is derived from workers experiencing the chaos of the capitalist modes of production and appropriation's corresponding relations of production which demonstrate the economic need of revolutionary expropriation of the capitalist, aristocratic landed and financial parasitic classes.

Contemporary review of hitherto existing Revolutionary analysis has engendered critical practical experiences as the premise in the labor process, such workers wondering why they, by selling their labor power to capitalist create wealth derived from labor power that is appropriated by landowners as rent, capitalist's profits derived directly from exploitation of wage labor as personified capital, rent from tenets, and from interest derived from finance capital loans and banking systems.

Consequently, economically, the toiling masses and working classes have to fight these exploitative modes of production and appropriation. It was in these struggles that socialism and working class partisanship arose. This, derived from centuries of restricted economy arising from feudal Europe, the Black Death, and in England the turn from landed aristocratic property relations of production to capitalist commodity production by wage labor.

Lil Joe.Radical@gmail.com

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