Los Angeles, May Day, 2006
Following is a report to the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International on the situation in the US. It was written by Peter Johnson and approved by Refoundation and Revolution in October 2006.
In the second quarter of 2006 the US economy slowed. The real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent, down from 5.6 percent in the first quarter and 3.2 percent for all of 2005. The economy may be reaching a cyclical peak, since both business investment and housing have slowed because of excess capacity. The labor market is tight. The official unemployment rate was 4.6 percent in September, and even the lowest wages are beginning to rise. Energy prices have risen dramatically over the past two years, but excess capacity has prevented a generalized inflationary spiral. The federal budget deficit has narrowed to less than 3 percent of GDP. The Dow-Jones Industrial Average has risen above its previous peak in 2001 before the last recession. The trade deficit is too wide to sustain, but it is no longer widening. Another recession will come, but it's not imminent.
The capitalists continue to raise the rate of exploitation of workers through restructuring, speedup and a constant downward pressure on wages and benefits. Insecure employment, two-tier wages, wage increases that don't keep up with inflation, and attacks on health insurance and pensions are the norm, even in unionized sectors. Union density continues to decline, as older workers retire and younger workers, whose interests the union bureaucracy has sacrificed, see little reason to join a union. At some companies workers have fought back and won limited victories. For example, at the GM spinoff Delphi a rank-and-file rebellion won job buyouts and pension and health insurance guarantees for older workers, but nothing for younger workers. See "Soldiers of Solidarity (SOS) Take on GM, Delphi and the UAW Bureaucracy, Win Benefits for Delphi Workers, and Pose Questions for the Labor Movement" in Refoundation and Revolution, Summer 2006.
Los Angeles, May Day, 2006
The situation of Black workers is worse than that of white workers and deteriorating more rapidly. The relatively well-paid union jobs that allowed many Black families to escape poverty are becoming scarcer, replaced by lower-paid nonunion jobs. Urban areas are deteriorating or being gentrified, leaving the poor without decent housing, schools, or medical facilities. Children are being deprived of social assistance, because their parents no longer qualify. With education and jobs unavailable, drugs, crime and prison are the fate of millions of youth. The destruction of Black-majority New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the dispersal of its population show how little the authorities care about African Americans. See "An Unnatural Disaster: Hurricane Katrina One Year Later" in Refoundation and Revolution, Summer 2006.
Forty million Latinos, mainly Mexican Americans, experience racial oppression similar to that of African Americans. Twelve million "illegal" immigrants are especially vulnerable, since they have no legal rights and can be expelled from the country at any moment. In December 2005 the US House of Representatives passed a bill making it a crime to enter the US without papers or to assist those who enter illegally. This bill would have made nearly all Latinos criminals, since most assist family or friends who are "illegal". The Senate did not pass the bill, because the capitalists need immigrant labor, don't want the government to interfere with their right to exploit, and don't want to provoke such an important part of the population needlessly. But the threat of criminalization was enough to bring millions of Latinos into the streets from March through May Day 2006 and to build a new movement and a new Latino identity. See "The Struggle of Immigrant Labor Is the Struggle of All Labor" in Refoundation and Revolution, Summer 2006.
The women's movement has been relatively inactive over the past year, continuing a pattern of many years. Women have mobilized for union organizing, Katrina solidarity, immigrant rights and other working-class struggles, but not specifically around women's rights. The main women's rights struggle has been protecting abortion and contraceptive rights. South Dakota has passed a law outlawing abortion except to save the life of the woman. The US Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that other exceptions must be allowed, but Bush administration appointments to the Court have shifted the balance to the right. The South Dakota law may be repealed by a voter referendum. If the law isn't repealed, it will be challenged in court in a case that will certainly go to the US Supreme Court. The Court may decide to reaffirm its precedents, since overturning Roe v. Wade could reignite the women's movement. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved nonprescription sales of the "morning after pill" for women eighteen and older, because withholding it from adult women on the basis of religious moralism rather than sound medicine was causing too much controversy.
The movement of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and queer people (LBGTQ movement) has been more active in the past year, mainly around the issue of "gay marriage". San Francisco and several other cities and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court have declared that same-sex couples have the right to marry, since to deny them that right would be discriminatory. The city declarations have been overturned by state court decisions, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision still stands. Many employers and some cities and states have extended partner benefits to same-sex couples and unmarried heterosexual couples. The religious right has mobilized "to defend marriage" through laws and referenda, and the LGBTQ movement and its allies have countermobilized.
The war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular. The occupation is failing. Iraq is in ruins. Most Iraqis reject the occupation. The resistance continues. Conflicts among Shia, Sunnis and Kurds seem to be escalating into civil war. US soldiers are dying. Money is being wasted. More and more people think the occupation should end and the troops should come home. The Israeli attacks on Palestine and Lebanon in summer 2006 rallied wavering Republican and Democratic politicians to support Israel and the Bush administration against "terrorism" and initially confused sections of the antiwar movement. But the main effect has been to link Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon and undermine support for the war on any front. See "Iraq: Occupational Hazards" and "Israel out of Lebanon! Free Palestine!" and "Israel out of Lebanon! Free Palestine!" in Refoundation and Revolution, Summer 2006.
For now the Bush agenda of war, privatization, and tax cuts for the rich is being thwarted by popular disaffection. Bush lost the patriotic mandate he claimed after 9/11. He is again the dangerous fool he was before. If the Democrats ran against the war and the Bush agenda, they could take both houses of Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. But they're more likely to defeat themselves by running "Bush-lite" campaigns and helping the Republicans to survive Bush this year and perhaps even to retain the presidency in 2008.
Social tensions are high in the US. Workers, Blacks, Latinos, women, LGBTQ people and youth are angry about their conditions and cynical about the government and the system. But for now there is little mobilization except in the immigrant rights movement, and even that may be fading, as the government backs away from its most draconian measures and the class differences among Latinos emerge. The unions continue to retreat, and the social movements are mostly quiet. The antiwar movement has not been able to translate the mass antiwar sentiment into mass antiwar action.
At some point the contradiction between the high level of popular discontent and the low level of mass mobilization will be resolved by renewed activism. But for now the contradiction is the political reality in the US.
Most socialists in the US are outside the existing left organizations, which they see as too stifling. Anarchism is less strong among youth than it was five years ago, its claims for the superiority of anarchist spontaneity over socialist organization having proved hollow. The Communist Party (CP) and its social-democratic split, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (COCDS), work in the unions and in the antiwar and other movements, where their supporters promote the Democratic Party as the "progressive" alternative to Bush and the Republicans.
To the left of the CP and the COCDS, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA) works among the poor, whom it sees as "the new working class". It has considerable influence in the Black community in several northern and western cities. The Black Workers League (BWL), concentrated in the South, combines labor and community work. For Refoundation and Revolution LRNA and the BWL are the most important Black-led revolutionary socialist organization.
The Workers World Party (WWP) has split and become less effective, but also more openly socialist and less sectarian. The International Socialist Organization (ISO) remains the largest revolutionary socialist organization in the US and has avoided the opportunist slide of its former comrades in the Socialist Workers Party of Britain. For Refoundation and Revolution the ISO is the most important predominantly white revolutionary socialist organization.
The US Greens, far to the left of their European counterparts, provide an electoral umbrella for socialists. Solidarity, the ISO, the WWP, and others are running candidates on the Green ticket this year. The Greens oppose the war and have brought down the wrath of the Zionists by adopting a strong position on Palestine.
Refoundation and Revolution comrades continue to work in several unions and in the antiracism, immigrant rights, antiwar and Palestine solidarity movements. The most important change in our work over the past year is the one we projected in our report on the US situation for the June 2005 CRFI International Executive Council meeting: "We are in the process of forming a tendency with other left-wing Solidarity members for the July 2006 Solidarity national convention around issues important in the work of Solidarity: antiracism, transcending economism, regroupment with the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and the Black Workers League (BWL), and democratic-centralism."
The tendency, called the Refounding Solidarity Caucus, was launched in October 2005 with the "Draft Call for Refounding Solidarity", which proposed reorienting Solidarity in six areas: 1) solidarity with Black and Latino liberation, 2) revolutionary regroupment, 3) the transitional method, 4) internationalism, 5) Marxist education and political debate, and 6) building Solidarity.
Refoundation and Revolution members and other Refounding Solidarity supporters debated these issues in Solidarity during the preconvention discussion period and at the July 2006 convention. Signers of the "Draft Call for Refounding Solidarity" had 30 of the 129 delegate votes at the convention. If we had demanded proportional representation on the basis of a vote on the "Call" and other documents we submitted, we would have picked up a few more votes to have at least 25 percent and three or four of the thirteen positions on the National Committee.
This proportion somewhat overstates the organizational influence of the Refounding Solidarity Caucus. Solidarity has 350 nominal members, but most of these didn't bother to attend the convention or to give proxy votes to those who did. Refounding Solidarity has less influence among these inactive members than we do among active members. But the proportion also overstates our influence among active members, since many caucus supporters agree with the Refounding Solidarity platform and are active in struggles but not very active in Solidarity.
The Refounding Solidarity Caucus decided not to ask for proportional representation in the leadership, because we did not have enough support to achieve the reorientation we sought and we did not want to waste time and energy debating in isolated leadership bodies or to take responsibility for implementing policies with which we did not agree. We limited our goals to practical measures, most importantly a commission to develop Solidarity's antiracism work, a systematic discussion of the link between trade-union and antiracism work, as part of a discussion of the transitional method in general, and continuing to include Palestine solidarity in antiwar work. We put only one Caucus member on the National Committee, not a Refoundation and Revolution member.
In the coming year Refoundation and Revolution will focus on our external work, rather than the internal life of Solidarity. We and our Refounding Solidarity allies lead the Anti-Racism Commission. We will work there and in Solidarity branches where we have members. We will contribute to Solidarity's labor and other discussions. But we will commit fewer resources to Solidarity activities than we have over the past year. We will try to consolidate our gains from the convention by building Refounding Solidarity and Refoundation and Revolution.