Rubinstein, who works at a meatpacking plant in this city and is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers, spoke on behalf of the event's organizers, the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Washington, D.C. The majority of participants came from those states. Others attended from Ohio, New York, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Nine were attending their first regional gathering of the communist movement, and seven were below the age of 26.

Well over half of those present had taken part in preparatory classes organized by the SWP branches leading up to the school, drawing on the same reading material used there.

Most participants were factory workers, and their political discussions with co-workers, and involvement in labor and farm struggles and other political activity, informed a number of the contributions to the discussion.

The school ended at midday on Monday, January 15, so that participants could join the march and rally commemorating Martin Luther King Day in Atlanta--an action that attracted around 3,000 people.

The gathering was organized around talks, discussions, and reading and study sessions on "The Historic Change in the Family Structure and Coming Social Battles," which was introduced by Norton Sandler; "Factionalism and Polarization in U.S. Politics: the Changing Struggle for a Proletarian Party," introduced by James Harris; and "The Jewish Question," introduced by Dave Prince. All three speakers are members of the SWP National Committee.

The discussion during the school continued throughout the two and a half days with few pauses. Participants clearly relished the opportunity to engage in study and discussion of the theory and program of the communist movement.

The to and fro on political ideas spilled over into the meal breaks and into a lively party on Saturday evening.

A wide range of Pathfinder literature was available for purchase at the school, and some $450 worth of titles were sold. Sales of secondhand books and pamphlets donated by partisans of the communist movement throughout the region raised around $300 towards the cost of staging the event. Several participants walked away with armloads and boxfuls of Marxist titles purchased for $1 each or less.  
 
Character of political period
"This is the first of what we hope will be four regional socialist schools," said Norton Sandler at the opening of the weekend. "Why hold such events now?" he asked. "It's because we are coming out of a retreat of the labor movement--and, while making no prediction on the pace of events, the direction of motion is toward revolution. Our communist theory and our understanding of it become more important as revolutionary possibilities stop receding and start coming closer."

Sandler's remarks on the nature of the school prefaced his introduction to the discussion on "The Historic Change in the Family Structure and Coming Social Battles," which drew extensively on material from Communist Continuity and the Fight for Women's Liberation: Documents of the Socialist Workers Party 1971-86, a three-part publication by Pathfinder Press; the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; and Capital by Marx, particularly the chapter entitled "Machinery and Large-Scale Industry."

"Marx and Engels explained that the bourgeoisie 'has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation,'" said Sandler, quoting from the Manifesto, published in 1848. "A decade and a half later," he continued, "Marx finished Capital. There he laid bare the contradictions and brutality of capitalism, which comes into being dripping blood from every pore.

"In the period of the industrial revolution," said Sandler, "capitalism hurled women and children into the labor force. Marx explained the revolutionary ramifications of this violent process."

In Capital, Marx wrote, "However terrible and disgusting the dissolution of the old family ties within the capitalist system may appear, large-scale industry, by assigning an important part in socially organized processes of production, outside the sphere of the domestic economy, to women, young persons and children of both sexes, does nevertheless create a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of relations between the sexes."

Sandler pointed out, "What Marx explained is being played out in the world today."

"The unpaid labor that women perform within the family is essential to the raising of each generation of workers," he said. "At the same time, the capitalists continually draw women out of the home and into industry. The process that began in large numbers with women working in shipyards and factories during World War II was never reversed."

Women gain in confidence as they enter the working class and the labor movement. They begin to demand equality at the same time as they take their place in labor struggles and other political issues."

Capitalism continues to function in just the same way, with the same brutality, as described by Marx, said Sandler. The consequence of these contradictory processes is a further disintegration of the family structure.  
 
Households headed by single women
Not only is the two-parent family with one breadwinner less prevalent today but families are increasingly headed by one parent--the mother. "The most radical change in the last 15 years," he said, "is the fact that 32 percent of households are today headed by single women. And we can see the same trends in all the imperialist countries but Japan."

"Meanwhile, the Clinton administration's 'welfare reform,' called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, has taken away the state-provided safety net from millions of such families. Many working-class women are left exposed to the layoffs and other attacks that will come with an economic downturn. The more farsighted capitalist mouthpieces like outgoing New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan are apprehensive about what this can mean--the social explosions that can be posed.

"What we want to address today," said Sandler, "are the implications of these developments for the working class and the communist movement, including the culture war against the so-called unmarried woman."

Rightist forces and others have markedly increased their warnings about the "harmful effects" of divorce, and about other changes in attitudes and behavior that accompany women's greater economic and social independence, said Sandler.

"For many years abortion has been the cutting edge of the clash between partisans and opponents of the fight for women's equality. But the campaign aimed at the right to divorce and other progressive changes could outstrip the abortion debate in the next few years," he said. He cited material from both liberal and reactionary sources.

Many said in the discussion that they were struck by Sandler's remarks on divorce and the culture war that is brewing around it.

"Statistically, every other marriage in Sweden ends in divorce," said Mats from Stockholm. One Christian Democratic politician has called for legislation to provide government funds for marriage counseling and a one-year cooling-off period, an increase of six months on the present requirement, before a divorce is final.

A number of participants in the school contributed to an exchange of views on child support. Several expressed unease at remarks during the discussion that fathers have an obligation to help support their children. "Some of my male co-workers have half their paychecks garnished for child support," said one rail worker.

Cindy Jaquith, a factory worker from Miami, said that "the woman has a right to demand child support; it's part of labor solidarity to support her in doing so. We take that stance without taking responsibility for the current laws and the way they are implemented."

When discussion started up again on the second morning of the school, Sandler utilized some questions on the nature of the family under capitalism that had been raised earlier to recommend a close reading of the introduction to the Pathfinder title Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women.

That article explains clearly that it is the capitalist mode of production today, centered on large-scale production of commodities and the exploitation of wage labor, and not the family structure that gives rise to and profits from women's oppression, he said. "The family structure under capitalism is determined by those relations.

"On this point, it's an advance on the 1979 report in Communist Continuity and the Fight for Women's Liberation, titled 'The Struggle by Women against Their Oppression as a Sex Is a Form of the Class Struggle,' as useful as that report is."  
 
Factionalism in U.S. politics
James Harris introduced the discussion on "Factionalism and Polarization in U.S. Politics: The Changing Struggle for a Proletarian Party," by sketching the evolution of factional clashes among capitalist politicians in the United States since the close of the November election. He used sections of Capitalism's World Disorder and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, both by Jack Barnes, and State and Revolution by Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin.

The new Bush administration will carry out the bipartisan antilabor course of Clinton and the Republican Party-led Congress, of the last near decade, he said. This is an example of the continuing shift of capitalist politics to the right, said the SWP leader. At the same time, more factional disputes are brewing, dramatized by Clinton's celebration of Gore's "victory" a few weeks after Bush's election had been confirmed (see article on front page.)  
 
Irrationality of capitalism
The power crisis in California is an example of the irrationality of the profit-driven capitalist system, said Harris. "What is their solution?" he asked. "It's to have us--'consumers' and working people--pay more!" The crisis will also be used to promote nuclear power, he said. The dangers of that alternative were illustrated when the Indian Point plant in New York was recently restarted. It immediately sprang radioactive leaks, blamed by the company on the operators who carried out the startup.

"What we have to do," said Harris, "is use the accumulated experience of the communist movement contained in the books and pamphlets distributed by Pathfinder Press to deal with the political events breaking today from a Marxist orientation. If we don't do that, then inevitably we begin to adapt to this or that voice in bourgeois politics, which can only be directed back into the maintenance of the bourgeois system."

Contributions to the discussion covered a wide range of topics. Addressing the infringements of voting rights confronted by Blacks and Haitian immigrant workers, Sam Manuel, a meat packer from Washington, D.C., emphasized that "this is the normal functioning of capitalist politics in this country. There was no conspiracy. It was exposed in Florida because there was a disputed election. And it also came to light because there were more Blacks turning out to vote.

"The increased registration and turnout of Blacks and immigrant workers in the election was a striking thing," said Harris. "It showed their confidence and their refusal to be sidelined.

"But there is a difference between what happened this year and the voter registration and education drives in the south that were a key part of the mass civil rights movement," he said. "Democratic Party forces who spearheaded the increased turnout to vote for Gore did not prepare workers and farmers for what they'd face on the way to and at the polling stations. They weren't prepared for the delaying tactics, the obstruction, and the harassment they faced from officials and cops.

"Many weren't trained in the use of voting machines, or aware of the various kind of ballots they could expect to see. And so many were denied their right to vote.

"The turnout of Haitian immigrants and others was one more confirmation of the progressive impact of immigration on the working class here," he added. "Ten percent of the respondents in the latest census said they were foreign-born. You know that understates the real situation. The government drives against immigrants, but capitalism continues to draw them in. This won't change."

Karl Butts from Plant City, Florida, reported on the "cost-price squeeze" facing farmers like him, including the exorbitant cost of seed, and the impact of the rising price of oil and other products of the energy industry. Many farm inputs, from fertilizer to plastics, use petroleum-based ingredients, he pointed out.

Participants from the United Kingdom and Sweden reported debates among capitalist politicians in Europe over the stance to take towards Washington's pursuit of a "missile defense" system; others noted the likely catastrophic impact of a downturn in the United States on Mexico and other semicolonial countries heavily dependent on the U.S. market for their exports.  
 
Discussion on 'The Jewish Question'
The pace of discussion kept up through the last day of the school, which began with Dave Prince's introduction on "The Jewish Question."

The contributions on this theme clearly benefited from the preparatory classes many had gone through. In particular, a number of contributors quoted passages from the Pathfinder title, The Jewish Question: a Marxist Interpretation, by Abram Leon. Prince also referred to a 1938 document entitled, "Theses on the Jewish Question," which is published in Pathfinder's The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party: Minutes and resolutions 1938-39, and to writings on this that can be found in the Collected Works of Bolshevik Party leader V.I. Lenin.

"In a period of retreat by the labor movement, and of capitalist 'prosperity,' assimilationist illusions grow," he said. "Even communists have been known to answer the question 'Are You Jewish?' with something like, 'I'm not Jewish, but my mother and father are,' as if being Jewish is simply a matter of religion or tradition."

Such illusions, said Prince, go hand in hand with denying the coming violent social conflicts, as well as the revolutionary opportunities, that capitalist crises always engender.

Capitalism itself "makes a Jew a Jew," said Prince. "Anti-Semitism is used by the capitalist rulers to misdirect the frustrations of the lower middle classes, who are ruined by the workings of capitalism. Jew-hatred is inscribed on the banner of fascist movements, which rise in a period of crisis. It took on a gigantically virulent form in Germany in the 1930s and '40s," said Prince. He also emphasized that the key to the Nazi victory and the holocaust that followed was the misleadership of Stalinism and the defeat of the working class.

Early warning signs of such trends can be seen in the United States today, Prince noted, pointing to ultrarightist Patrick Buchanan, who uses coded anti-Semitic allusions as he works to pull together a fascist cadre.

The importance of Leon's book, he said, is that it explains the history and special character of the Jewish nationality, which provide the grist to the mill of fascist forces and other rightists to try to turn Jews into a scapegoat for the evils of capitalism, especially in periods of crisis and open class conflict.

"Leon explains that Jews were defined by their economic role as traders and representatives of a money economy in the period of the Roman empire and then the feudal Middle Ages," he said. The ruling classes of these precapitalist epochs deflected class resentments of the masses in town and country by organizing pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots.  
 
Rightists exploit fears, resentments
"With the coming of capitalism, Jews ceased to play any special economic role. But rightists, using violent methods to salvage capitalist rule, exploit fears and resentments surviving from the past to mobilize their forces."

A number of speakers noted that this is an issue today among their co-workers. Arlene Rubinstein said this is a frequent discussion on her job. "One co-worker blamed one injustice on the fact that 'the plant manager is a Jew.' It's an idea that's out there," she said, "and we have to take it on as part of fighting for the unity of the class."

Rubinstein and others reported being asked "are you Jewish," by co-workers. "When you're asked that, it's best to say 'yes' and see what the next question is," said Sandler in the discussion.

"There's less anti-Semitism today in the United States than there's ever been, I believe, but that doesn't mean this won't explode onto the scene as polarization deepens. There were a lot of assimilationist illusions in Germany in the 1930s, but this did not prevent people from being sent to the gas chambers. But we should always remind ourselves that communists and other vanguard workers were the first targets of the Nazis.

"Our analysis of this question is an important part of our theory and our program," he said.  
 
A successful gathering
After addressing some of the points in the discussion, Prince brought the conference to a close on behalf of the organizers.

"This has been a tremendous success," he said, "and not just the three days we've spent here. The classes, the reading, the Militant Labor Forums that were organized in the weeks leading up to this--they were all part of it."

"We want to continue the study and conquering of communist politics coming out of the conference," he said. "When difficult questions come up we can go to the books and the communist program and talk it out to the end."  
 
 
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