"The devastating impact on working people of the world capitalist economic crisis is not just a problem in the United States, but a world problem," continued Harris, speaking at a meeting of nearly 50 people at the Militant Labor Forum here. "The multibillionaire families, the capitalists, are a tiny minority, but they hold economic and state power. They control the governments, the media, the education, and the armies.

"The perspectives advanced by the socialist campaign are reasonable and understandable," the socialist candidate emphasized, "but that doesn't determine politics. Real social change, and real politics, involves tens of millions. Look at the capacities of the Palestinian fighters, whose demands for self-determination and national liberation our campaign supports 100 percent.

"Look at Yugoslavia these past few days," Harris said. "The vote didn't make the change. The change came when working people and others took to the streets. It came when miners and other industrial workers stopped work and started marching. That made the difference--a difference that could have come sooner without the brutal war and bombing by the United States government and its allies last year."

Harris also visited Södertä lje, a city south of Stockholm, where he spoke to two high school classes. He explained to students about the worsening conditions workers and small farmers face in the United States, and their growing resistance to the assaults by the employers and the government.

One student asked about the employers' use of prison labor.

"A lot of prisoners who want to work are not allowed to," said Harris. "And a lot are forced to work. I have worked in plants with prisoners as my co-workers. They can't join the union. They have to go back to prison at night so they can't get together with fellow workers to discuss the conditions we face. They never get their full pay. This is increasing at the same time that police brutality and the death penalty are on the rise."

After one of the classes a number of students gathered around Harris for more discussion. Several signed up for more information on the Young Socialists, which helped to organize the socialist candidate's visit.

Harris also spoke at a seminar titled "Afro-American Voices" at Södertörns Högskola, a university college in southern Stockholm.

Among the 46 people at the Militant Labor Forum were many youth from schools where Young Socialists members had built the event. The workers and students who attended listened intently as Harris discussed the realities of class exploitation and oppression, and resistance by workers and working farmers in the United States.

"Two million people are in U.S. prisons today, proportionally the highest rate in the world," Harris said, "There is a real class struggle where working people are fighting extending work hours, extensive overtime, and enormous speedup at work. This intensification of labor is where the economic upturn comes from, not from technology, computers, or 'knowledge expansion' as a professor said, pointing to his head, at the seminar I participated in yesterday. There are thousands of sweatshops in major cities in the United States. Some 150,000 children work as agricultural laborers in the fields at or below minimum wage.

"How can we fight for a world where human needs, not profits, are what guide social priorities?" the socialist candidate asked. He pointed to Cuba, where workers and peasants made a socialist revolution. As a result of that fundamental transformation, "farmers can't lose their land like they can in any capitalist country."

Social relations have changed in Cuba, he said, relating a story of a doctor he met during a recent visit there with a group of working farmers. The doctor was asked why he didn't find better-paying work in the tourist industry. "He answered, 'I became a doctor to make people well, not to make money.' It took a revolution to make this change.

"Our chief problem today is leadership," Harris said. "That's what the socialist campaign is part of building."

One participant asked what Harris and his party "can do about poverty. The United States is, after all, among the richest countries in the world."

"The existence of poverty has to do with how the capitalist system works," Harris replied. "Through struggle, the working class can make temporary gains, but poverty is on the increase in the world. We have to get rid of capitalism. It is a hard thing. Part of that process is to find those who want to join the fights. As an individual who has decided to join the fight you make a difference. Our campaign is not about utopian ideas. We aim to strengthen fighting capacities of working people and expand our world and historical perspectives as part of the resistance and struggles today."

Birgitta Isacsson is a member of the metal workers union. Johan Nilsson contributed to this article.