Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2008 / http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122306950849703363.html
Is the Rescue Plan Socialism? The Far Left Says, 'No Way, Comrade' Throwing a Lifeline to Banks, Corporations Is a Far Cry From the Revolution They Crave By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- If conservative Republicans are right and the $700 billion financial-sector rescue plan signals America's slide into socialism, you'd think Seth Dellinger would be celebrating. But Mr. Dellinger, a Socialist Workers Party candidate for Congress, says that what might smell like communism to free-market purists looks like just another capitalist shell game to him. "They can reorganize capitalism in different ways, and they will," says Mr. Dellinger, a college graduate turned working-class meat cutter. "But it is above all with a view toward continuing a system in which a small minority of super-rich families controls everything." To Mr. Dellinger, 32, capitalism's crisis may be socialism's opportunity. He's making the case to anyone who will listen that the U.S. should adopt a Cuban-style government before the Bush administration and Congress empty the treasury in order to keep workers from storming the barricades. "What they're trying to do, above all, is prevent millions of workers from lining up outside banks all over the country, because they know they'll have to send troops and cops," says Mr. Dellinger. "That kind of scenario could unfold quicker than people think." On Wednesday, as he does once a week or so, he and another Socialist Worker drove to the University of Maryland and set up a folding table outside the student union. Mr. Dellinger, wearing black slacks, a mock turtleneck and smudged horn-rimmed glasses, taped up a few posters. "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq and Afghanistan," said one. "For a Workers and Farmers Government," said another. He carefully put books on a rack for easy viewing. "Malcolm X Talks to Young People," "Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It," and "The Communist Manifesto." Relaxed, patient and earnest, he approached students who walked by the table with their iPods and cellphones. "If you had $700 billion, you could use it to build new schools, new hospitals and new infrastructure," he told one student who stopped to chat. Some ignored him. Some shunned him. Out of curiosity, some picked up copies of The Militant and read an article about what the party weekly, among others, describes as "the most severe financial crisis facing the U.S. rulers since the 1930s." One student listened to Mr. Dellinger briefly and responded: "Socialism is completely antithetical to human rights." Then he walked away. "He should study the history of socialism," Mr. Dellinger said. The topsy-turvy Wall Street rescue, which failed in the House on Monday then passed the Senate on Wednesday, and finally won House approval on Friday has done what neither presidential candidate has yet been able to do: bring left and right together, albeit in opposition to the plan and from very different positions. During debate on the House floor, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican, derisively recalled the "peace, land and bread" slogan of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. "Today you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom," Rep. McCotter scolded his fellow lawmakers. "I suggest that the people on Main Street have said they prefer their freedom, and I am with them." Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a conservative Texas Republican, warned his colleagues on the House floor Friday not to react in panic, jettison free-market principles and start along the "slippery slope to socialism." "How can we have capitalism on the way up, and socialism on the way down?" he asked. Genuine socialists beg to differ. "This is not socialism," says Sam Webb, national chairman of the Communist Party USA. "Bailing out the biggest financial corporations in the country is a far cry from what we have in mind when we think about socialism." During a transport workers union protest on Wall Street this week, members of the Socialist Party USA handed out fliers that screamed "NO to the Banker Bailout." The party called for guaranteed housing and employment and the eventual abolition of all financial markets. Until that day comes, the Socialists are advocating a nationwide moratorium on home foreclosures, a tax on every financial transaction in order to fund social services, a 6% additional tax on anyone with an income greater than $5 million and a new national health-insurance program. The left wing faces fissures of its own. The Socialist Workers, Mr. Dellinger's party, considers itself the true heir of Marx and Lenin and seeks to emulate the Cuban model of Fidel Castro. It argues that the Socialist Party is laboring under the false impression that capitalism can be reformed, and the Socialist Workers members scorn the American Communist Party as a cross between closet Stalinists and closet Democrats. The Way Far Left agrees on one thing: The Wall Street rescue won't help the working class. "It poses the urgent need for a revolution in this country, a socialist revolution that will throw the billionaire ruling families out of power and replace them with a workers and farmers government," Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate Róger Calero said in a statement distributed this week. Mr. Calero, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan meatpacker, is on the ballot in the five states that allow noncitizens to run for president, even though the Constitution bars them from serving. Mr. Calero said in an interview that should the party win, he is confident voters would approve a constitutional amendment allowing him to take office. Mr. Dellinger, who is running for the District of Columbia's House delegate seat, grew up in Seattle, the son of a doctor and a social worker. His grandfather was pacifist David Dellinger, who was among the leaders of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Party convention and whose trial, as one of the Chicago Seven, became an indictment of the Vietnam War itself. The younger Mr. Dellinger studied music at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., and, not long after graduation, went on an exchange visit to Cuba. It was mostly a lark. But two weeks on the island convinced him that Mr. Castro's brand of socialism met the needs of people in a way capitalism had not. He was tempted to stay, but fellow American socialists told him he was needed in the fight at home. Back in the U.S., he enlisted in the working class. The Socialist Workers see coal-mining, meat and garment industries as ripe for party recruitment. So Mr. Dellinger took a meatpacking job in Los Angeles in 2002. These days, he's earning $14.25 an hour cutting veal on the night shift at A.M. Briggs, a company that serves restaurants, country clubs, hotels and other high-end customers in the Washington, D.C., area. At the University of Maryland on Wednesday, the day the Senate voted to approve the Bush administration package, he focused his pitch on the demise of capitalism. "What do you think about the crisis on Wall Street?" he asked Jihan Asher, a 17-year-old freshman studying education. Ms. Asher responded: "I still don't quite get how it's going to impact me personally." Mr. Dellinger explained that in recent decades the capitalists have found their profits from the exploitation of workers shrinking. "So they've turned to gambling on Wall Street to make a faster buck," he said. "A lot of people could lose millions of dollars, but their lifestyle isn't going to change. They're not like you and me." Ms. Asher is neither a Washington resident, nor old enough to vote for Mr. Dellinger. But she bought a $5 subscription to The Militant and signed up to receive party email alerts. For Mr. Dellinger, that was victory enough. -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
