The Militant (logo)  
   Vol.66/No.33           September 2, 2002  
 
 
Letters
 
 
Lord Greenspan
Upon learning Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is about to be knighted by the royalty of England for bringing economic stability to the world, I’m glad I was already laying on the floor exercising!

Talk about satire, I could only think of a political cartoon with the world’s three billion disenfranchised and marginalized people who make less than $2 a day looking quizzically at the royal proceedings.

Larry Ginter
Rhodes, Iowa
 
 
Campaign statement
It seems to me that the New York Socialist Workers campaign statement printed in the August 19 Militant could have been clearer. Someone unfamiliar with the communist movement could easily get the impression that the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists expect revolution to occur mainly as a result of their own exhortations.

Related to this, the full scope of what’s being discussed doesn’t come through clearly when the statement uses words like depression, war and revolution. I think the statement would be stronger if it spelled things out more.

1) As bad as things are now, the ruling class attacks and sudden breakdowns of the past three decades are destined to get dramatically worse. Capitalism is headed towards a depression on the scale of the 1930s, and war on the scale of Vietnam or worse.

2) Sooner or later, this will provoke massive working class protests, involving tens of millions in strikes, demonstrations, and other actions.

3) This working class revolt will open up the possibility of a revolutionary fight to replace the government of big business with a government of workers and farmers.

This perspective is discussed at length in various issues of New International, and in Pathfinder books by Jack Barnes. But in the pages of the Militant, the need for a workers and farmers government gets much more prominence than the first two points, and is often presented by itself. It seems to me that these three points should receive equal prominence, and should be discussed in the same breath.

No social system leaves the scene until it is thoroughly bankrupt, expressed in a profound social crisis that drives its opponents into action.

Dave Morrow
Oakland, California


The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home