The following article appeared in the Tehran Times of May 29, 1996 under the headline "Socialists in America: Yes, They Do Exist."

WASHINGTON (AFP) - And now, our featured speaker (drum roll please) ... presidential candidate John Harris of the American Socialist Workers Party!

Socialist Workers Party? In the United States?
Admittedly, the socialist cause hasn't taken America by storm just yet, but Harris - who held a news conference with running mate Laura Garza at the prestigious national press club in Washington this week - insists it only a matter of time.

"Winning," the meat-packer and union leader said, "is not synonymous with winning elections...we want to win. We want a workers' and farmers' government."

That is a tall order in a country where both Democrats and Republicans have shunned liberalism like the plague, and where socialism and communism might as well be four letter words.

Indeed, no candidate from the Socialist Workers Party has ever won any high office anywhere. Asked to recall their greatest electoral triumph, Garza said there once was a SWP member of a city council in California.

Actually, there is one self-described socialist in the U.S. Congress - independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a liberal state in the U.S. northeast.

But the American far left has largely been in tatters, since the breakup of that socialist bastion, the Soviet Union.

The way Harris and Garza see it, with conservative policies hastening the fall of capitalism, real gains for socialists are just around the corner.

They claim the so-called Republican revolution, which saw the more left-leaning Democrats lose control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, has spawned a counterrevolution of sorts.

And they say socialists have been energized by the "ultrarightist demagoguery" of Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who has run on an arch-conservative "America first" platform.

"This is the beginning of U.S. mobilizing our side," said Harris, who has drawn practically no media attention in his quixotic bid for the White House.

Describing Cuba as "an example for the world" and the administration of President Bill Clinton "the most warlike in decades," Harris calls for an immediate U.S. pullout from Bosnia and a complete lifting of the sanctions on Iraq.

On the domestic front, the SWP calls for a massive public works program, "jobs for all," dismantling the U.S. border guard and giving immigrants essentially the same rights as citizens.

In an era when government in cutting back, tough immigration reform is sweeping through Congress and Iraq is considered an evil empire, their quest is - for now - hopeless at best.

In the 1992 election, which put Democrat Clinton in the White House, the SWP got less than 25,000 votes nation wide.

So far, the SWP's drive to raise $90,000 in contributions for a slate of candidates has pulled in only $11,000 this year.

But Harris is undaunted.

"We think the capitalist government in this country should be overturned," Harris said. "And we're about building a movement that is capable of doing that."  
 
 
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