It was five years ago this month that South Central Federation of Labor delegates first voted against the war in Iraq. By the time the war started in March, 2003, dozens of state federations, locals, internationals and councils across the country had done the same.
But, while labor was voting against the war, Congress was voting for it: first to give George Bush a blank check to invade Iraq and then voting to continue funding.
This raises a very important question: Why did labor get it right while Congress got it so wrong?
The Democrats’ official alibi is that they were lied to by the President and the media failed to do a critical job in reporting the truth.
But, of course, the President and the corporate-owned media lied to us too, so it brings us back to the question: Why did we get it right while they got it wrong?
If you think back to that time just before the U.S. attacked Iraq, you’ll recall getting a dozen emails a week from anti-war sources, with articles from print and electronic media, explaining the great folly of going to war.
We knew what German intelligence was saying about “Curveball.” We knew the truth about the aluminum tubes and the mobile biological weapons labs. Somebody sent around the phony Nigerian documents, with the forgeries circled and explained. We knew that Saddam and Al-Qaeda were blood enemies. And, week after week, we listened to the weapons inspectors on Amy Goodman’s program tell us there were no WMDs to be found.
Sure, we also listened to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Powell lie through their teeth. But we knew the difference between their lies and the truth. So, again, why did we figure it out but Congress didn’t?
You don’t have to be too cynical to realize that they did know all along. That the truth was out there for all to see, but that Congress chose to act on the lie instead. Because the lie allowed them an opportunity to grab Iraq’s vast nationalized oil reserves.
And only now—after it is apparent that the oil grab didn’t work, that the war is lost, that continued occupation of Iraq is ruining the U.S. military and economy and that voters are sour on the project—many in Congress want to distance themselves from their earlier decisions.
But, to do that they have to claim that they were duped, victims of a great lie and a lax media.
History shows that Congress and the Democrats, no less than the President and the Republicans, are willing to wield military might in order to secure resources and markets in the interest of U.S. imperialism. And, history shows that they are more than willing to act on obvious lies to go to war.
The difference between them and us comes down to class. The working class has no material interest in stealing resources from other countries or in securing foreign markets. We’re not going to share in the corporate profits. And, since it is our “blood and treasure” that they’re talking about spending on the war, we have a strong interest in avoiding imperialist adventures.
Congressional action on the Iraq war is another example of why the capitalist class and their representatives are unfit to govern…as if yet another example was necessary.
PS, to read a prophetic article about the coming war from the December 2002 Union Labor News, click here.
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5 comments:
Some in Congress notably Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich got it right also.
And they've done a GREAT job in stopping it. I can't imagine where we'd be without them.
Instead of focusing on the two crumbs (moldy and highly unsatisfying, mind you) that our masters have let slip into the hallowed halls of wealthy power brokerage, we need to focus instead on what structural changes need to be made that will prevent wars like that in Iraq from happening in the future.
Ron is absolutely correct in pointing out that the working class has no material interest in pillaging resources. Period.
Unjust experiments in empire and capital accumulation will only be stopped when we mobilize the working class away from being an outside pressure group, and instead toward installing themselves as true leaders.
So, instead of spending our time campaigning for Democrats, so-called progressives, or idiots a-la Ralph Nader, it would do us well to - gasp - spend time talking to actual working people.
I know it's a novel concept, and you're not going to get your name in the paper or your face on the nightly news, but if we are truly interested in bettering life for the majority of working people in this county, than this seems to be the most logical and important thing to do.
Great entry and great site... thank you, Comrade Hainds, for directing me here.
I am, sadly, something of an outsider looking in since my present job is a non-union one. However, as someone who marched and organized constantly alongside labor in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005... against Uncle Sam's occupation and genocide in Mesopotamia the discussion has drawn me in!
I echo the previous comment concerning the role 'anti-war' politicians have played. They're exeptional at rhetoric, but the truth is that to stop this war, all they need to do is literally nothing. And considering that's the specialty of Congress, one wouldn't think it too tough!
Instead, Kucinich and his ilk chirp about a UN occupation (like the one that's so effective at preventing war in Southern Lebanon). Obviously that's not the answer.
Kucinich doesn't have the answer. He proposes, instead, the Democrat 3-step: mischaracterize the problem ("Civil War"/"Bush's Problem" etc), call for an investigation ("Impeach"), and propose a silly solution that stands no chance of being taken seriously ("UN Occupation").
Whenever Bush asks for a new spending bill for Iraq there is but one answer: give him the finger, ignore him, and move on to more important matters - like passing a bill that makes daylight savings time later so candy companies get paid on Haloween!
Which brings us to the question of tactics. After 5 years of taking walks in the street with no serious objective, the dead prez lyric comes to mind: "We ain't talking, no more;
we ain't squashin' shit with po-po;
And we ain't marchin in the middle of the goddamn road;
Cuz Martin got smoked"
I no longer see the point. The organization of Iraq marches have become a show - a pissing contest between pathetic sects who refuse to create anything resembling a United Front among the radical left.
There were 3 'national' marches and/or days of action regarding Iraq in October. That's just stupid.
That's where I think I differ with Comrade Hainds: I do think there's value in elections. Concurrently, I think the economic climate has begun to lend itself to the creation of a strong and dynamic new working movement around the two issues of OUT NOW and DEBT CANCELLATION. The later will become increasingly important because of the role that debt will play in facilitating land theft by banks and mortgate lenders coupled with their attempts to ethnically cleanse places like New Orleans and Harlem.
In 1848 Marx wrote, "The uprising of the proletariat is the abolition of bourgeois credit; for it is the abolition of bourgeois production and its order. Public and private credit are the economic thermometer by which the intensity of a revolution can be measured. To the same degree as they fall, the glow and generative force of a revolution rises."
Capitalism requires growth - the creation of needs and the means of the working population to satisfy them (i.e., credit cards). When the brakes are put on this process, which has started to happen today with the rise of forclosures and the extraordinary levels of consumer debt, the economy can no longer carry even the appearance of regularity (for the working class).
We need to organize ourselves based on these objective conditions. And in doing so, we have to recognize that the highest degree of political consciousness among the population at large comes in the context of presidential elections. Bourgeois elections can be useful insofar as they enable us to get a sense of our numbers and, by extension, our political power (or, in the case of 2004, the impotence). We have to use them to call attention to the issues the bourgeois dictatorship ignores or about which they prevaricate.
On Uncle Sam's Plantation, in 2008, few means of doing this present themselves more clearly and obviously to us than by organizing those who've made conscious choice to turn away from the propaganda matrix, away from money, and away from the bourgeois duopoly.
This doesn't mean we should mobilize behind the cult of Nader, but it does mean we must use the political campaign for our own ends. It must be about bringing unity to movement against the bourgeoisie, not a candidate. The candidate ought be the movement made manifest in human form.
My proposal for how to go about doing that is clear, but a Green Party campaign of, say, Cynthia McKinney serves a similar function of bringing together key elements of the working class and a lumpenproletariat that stands positioned today to be a powerful class force.
Sorry for the book...
You make some good points, comrade.
First, let me clarify that I don't entirely write off the electoral process. As Marx points out, history, and by extension, the emancipation of the working class from wage slavery is an evolutionary process. And part of that process, as I see it, is squeezing the bourgeoisie for as much as we can get from them in the mean-time. And given the historical stage at which we are at, this takes place in the realm of bourgeoise politics.
Second, I think that you're also correct in pointing out that we need to use the electoral process to meet our OWN ends; i.e. mobilizing working class people around a platform which furthers their interests. And the examples you gave - in particular the abolition of debt - are spot on in my book. I think, however, that we need a full platform, only insofar as it presents a clear vision of what exactly we are fighting for. In addition to those you mentioned would be things like universal health care, placing the 'commanding heights' of the economy under democratic control, etc.
Finally, you are correct in stating that the movement should provide these elements, and not vice-versa. And in reality, to do otherwise would contradict basic principles of the laws of history, and doom them to failure before the horse leaves the gate.
As far as the Green Party as an appropriate venue? I'm not so sure. It's been entirely permeated with Democratic Party hacks and people who's idea of social change centers around growing dread-locks, smoking dope and watching the Colbert Report. I would imagine that a Labor Party would be more receptive, and more fertile ground for this to happen ;)
A couple of comments on electoral politics.
First, the question of supporting Greens in an election shouldn’t be a problem for people coming out of a Leninist or Trotskyist tradition.
Our political tendency defines itself in terms of opposition to reformist working class parties. And, remember, the reformists’ goal is socialism but they think that socialism can be achieved by reforming capitalism and the capitalist state. Our beef with them is that we believe that capitalism cannot be reformed into socialism but that the working class must overthrow capitalism and the capitalist state.
And our tendency is practically defined in terms of opposition to the Popular Front. The Popular Front is a political formation that includes both working class and capitalist class elements. We are opposed to forming a government with representatives of the bourgeoisie and, furthermore, we won’t even support a party that would be willing to form such a government.
I’m not going to get into the history and theory here, but there are good reasons for these positions. Suffice it to say that both Lenin and Trotsky spent a great deal of their time fighting against tendencies in the working class movement that supported reformism and the Popular Front.
That brings us to the Green Party. The Green party doesn’t even rise to the level of a reformist party. A true reformist believes that capitalism can be transformed into socialism, but that socialism definitely is the goal. The Greens don’t even have socialism as a goal. Sure, there are some individual Greens who are socialists. But that’s not the position of the party. The Green Party proposes only to reform capitalism to make it a more democratic and humane system. As such, it’s a “sub-reformist” (if that’s a word) party, roughly equivalent to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
And there’s no question that Greens would participate in a Popular Front government if given half a chance. They’ve shared state power with capitalist parties in the handful of cases, like Germany, where they’ve had a chance to do so and there’s certainly nothing in their platform or philosophy that would prevent them from doing so whenever they got the chance.
So, what’s a Red to do? One option kicked around here is that we could run someone in a national election. While I’d like to see Madison’s labor left to take initiatives, I don’t think we have the forces to run for president just yet.
But there are socialist organizations that do run candidates in presidential elections. Last time around, the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party were both on the ballot in Wisconsin. The Workers World Party ran in Wisconsin in 2000 but weren’t on the ballot in 2004.
What about lending critical support to one or another of these parties in ‘08?
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