"You don't have to worry about us moving toward the center," Harris pledged to a cadre of 18 fellow revolutionaries during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh yesterday. "We're not doing that."

Indeed, should Harris and company move any farther to the left, they will fall off the political spectrum altogether.

If elected, which won't happen this year, Harris says he would nationalize major corporations, dismantle the U.S. military, and arm workers and farmers.

In other words, if you like Castro's Cuba, you would love the United States under a Harris administration.

"We have lots of ideas. You can look at the books," Harris said, motioning toward the shelves in South Side's Pathfinder Book Store, the venue of his campaign appearance yesterday.

The store, a retail arm of the radical Pathfinder Press, offers "The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels," Malcolm X's "By Any Means Necessary," and the "Writings of Leon Trotsky," among other revolutionary guides.

In case you didn't notice, Harris, 52, ran for president on the National Socialist Workers ticket in 1996. You could say he was a third-party candidate, but he finished tenth, attracting 8,476 votes, nowhere near the amount that went to, say, John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party (113,670) or Monica Moorehead of the Workers World Party (29,083).

He did finish almost 3,000 votes ahead of "None of These Candidates" (5,608), an option on the ballot in Nevada.

A garment worker on leave from his job at a Marshall's distribution center in Atlanta, Harris is running on a ticket with a meat packer from Austin, Minn., Margaret Trowe.

This year, Harris and Trowe expect to appear on the ballot in 11 states, but not in Pennsylvania, where their party has no hope of collecting the 20,000 signatures needed. To vote for Harris, move to New York.

But he figured it still made sense to campaign here. This, after all, is no ordinary campaign.

Harris harbors no illusions about winning. Rather, his quixotic bid for the presidency is an effort to promote class consciousness among workers--and to lay the groundwork for a socialist revolution.

"There is no revolution that has ever been achieved at the ballot box. The ruling classes prevent it," Harris said, citing the example of Chile, where democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende was assassinated in a U.S.-supported coup in 1973.

"Real politics is carried out through mass actions and activities," Harris said, meaning demonstrations and strikes. "The struggle comes first."

Harris offers a variety of models for effecting dramatic change, including the economic boycotts and mass demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement, the overthrow by Castro's forces of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the combination of violence and protests that brought down apartheid in South Africa.

"What we are talking about is far more important than winning a political race right now," Harris said.

"Our basic problem as working people is we don't think of ourselves as a class and we don't think we can do it," he continued. "We don't think working people can run this society."

In contrast, wealthy Americans have a better-formed class consciousness, Harris said, giving them an advantage in repressing workers.

"The interests of the two classes are irreconcilable," he said.

And a political system controlled almost exclusively by two middle-of-the-road parties isn't helping any, he added.

"There are differences between [Democrats and Republicans]," Harris said. "But what they both seek to do is truncate and prevent the organization of workers as a class."

Regardless, Harris sees class warfare, in some form, as inevitable in the United States.

During his speech yesterday, he urged his audience to prepare themselves, to study the history of successful revolutions, and to spread class consciousness among workers and farmers.

"The explosions are going to take place. The fights are going to take place," Harris said at the crescendo of his hour-long speech. "What will determine whether we win or lose is what we do now."  
 
 
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