Chicago Holiday Appeal Speech

"Join Us in the Fight for a Socialist Future!"

We reprint below, edited for publication, remarks by Spartacist League speaker Paula Daniels at the Partisan Defense Committee Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, held on December 9 in Chicago.

There is a long, honorable tradition in the communist movement of coming to the aid of our class brothers and sisters who are imprisoned because of their actions, their beliefs, their convictions in the fight against this racist, capitalist system in which we live. James Cannon, a founding leader of the American Communist and later Trotskyist movement in this country worked to instill that tradition, and we of the Spartacist League proudly continue this work as an integral part of building the revolutionary party. Those of you who are familiar with us and the work we do know that we fight to instill this class consciousness at every opportunity that we can. We and our supporters work to educate and explain our revolutionary program whenever and wherever we intervene. Whether it’s the campuses, the unions, at demonstrations, at newspaper sales. We stand firm that the only way out of this hellish, racist system is to fight for what is ours. To win that fight we need a steeled, revolutionary party, our own party, whose goal is to fight for proletarian revolution and establish a workers government. For without our own government we will always be slaves for capital.

The ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, said once, “Know thy enemy,” and I always find that a very useful quote in election years. Already, we are subjected to an onslaught by the Democratic Party hopefuls, each trying to paint themselves as a mechanism for change. Don’t buy it! When you get down to it, no matter how brutal, vicious and racist the Bush administration is—and they are plenty nasty without doubt—the Democrats can never and will never be a real or qualitative alternative for the simple reason that they share the same fundamental goal, which is the maintenance of capitalist society. In reality, our “choice” consists of a few candidates from each party, who are handpicked by the bourgeoisie as reliable contenders to oversee capitalist rule. They are thrown to the public in the general election, and voters are then supposed to feel like we have some kind of choice over who governs.

But there’s a hitch—because exploitation, racism, military occupation and the shredding of our democratic rights are still going to be a reality no matter who wins the elections next November. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian October Revolution, captured bourgeois elections very nicely when he pointed out that even in the most democratic bourgeois societies the workers simply “decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament.” A lot of people might say, “It’s the lesser evil. We have to vote for the lesser evil.” But you know what? To accept the road of lesser-evilism is to concede defeat on their terms. It’s to reject the fight for working-class power. That’s lesser-evilism. I prefer the quote of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet: “A plague on both your houses!”

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the lesser evil du jour, this time around. That’s who we have. But let’s talk about them specifically. Obama is backed by the racist Daley machine in Chicago. He tells us there is no “black and white America”! Who really believes that? He refuses to rule out thermonuclear attack on Iran and supports some of the most draconian, anti-immigrant measures, like building a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border. That’s one lesser evil.

The other is Hillary Clinton. Transit workers should remember her opposition to the very powerful but very brief NYC transit strike in December 2005. As a “lesser evil” she voted to authorize the Iraq war and is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. She’s a very vociferous member of the anti-China forces on Capitol Hill, spewing poisonous protectionism and determined to facilitate capitalist counterrevolution in China. China is the new “evil empire” because, like the ex-Soviet Union, China is not capitalist. The 1949 Chinese Revolution must be unconditionally, militarily defended against both imperialism abroad and counterrevolution internally. Integral to that defense is a proletarian political revolution to oust the ruling Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy and install the rule of workers and peasants soviets. Why do we say protectionism is poisonous? Because it creates a phony scapegoat, because it undermines international working-class solidarity, and most of all it alibis those who truly are responsible, the real forces responsible for unemployment and misery, which is the profit-hungry capitalist class! Yet the AFL-CIO bureaucracy embraces protectionism precisely because they are politically bankrupt.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the only workers revolution that ushered in a workers government, put the working class in power. Despite the fall of the USSR in 1991-92 and the deep retrogression of political consciousness that has deepened since then, the task of fighting for new Octobers remains our primary task. In fact, it is more urgent than ever as American imperialism has gained renewed impetus in the fall of the Soviet degenerated workers state—gained renewed impetus in its pursuit to maintain military domination internationally, all the while grinding down working people, the poor and oppressed here at home. As capitalist counterrevolution swept through East and Central Europe and the USSR, we stood at our posts from Berlin to Moscow, throwing our forces into the struggle to defend the endangered workers states. In sharp contrast, the bulk of our leftist opponents, such as the International Socialist Organization, mimicked their own bourgeoisie in hailing capitalist counterrevolution, unable and unwilling to recognize and see the precious gains that were lost for the international working class.

James Cannon put it eloquently when he pointed out that the Russian Revolution put flesh on the bones of the program of revolution. It showed us how the working class can take power by reorganizing the social system. It proved the superiority of a nationalized and planned economy over the profit-driven anarchy of capitalist production. Though not an easy task, we know how to, and more importantly, we know that we can do what must be done. So I invite you to join us! To crib from class-war prisoner Ed Poindexter, we’re looking for some people with fire in their bellies. I invite you to join us in the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all class-war prisoners, join us in the fight against racist oppression and join us in the fight for a socialist future.