Unionists working in garment plants, textile mills, coal mines, and packinghouses in a number of southeastern cities will be joined by other workers, farmers, revolutionary-minded young people, and supporters of the communist movement. They will come together to deepen their understanding of the workings of the capitalist system by reading, studying, and discussing basic works of the communist movement and their application to the class struggle in the United States today.

The conference will feature presentations by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party on three topics at the center of politics: "Factionalism and Polarization in U.S. Politics: The Changing Struggle for a Proletarian Party," "The Jewish Question," and "The Historic Change in the Family Structure and Its Implications for Coming Social Battles."

The three-day event will allow participants to step back from day-to-day activity and engage in some intense study as they think through and discuss important challenges to revolutionary workers and farmers today. Many participants will be reading and holding discussions in their home towns over the next week and a half to prepare to delve into these political questions.

The talk on the Jewish question will deal with the structure of the Jews as an oppressed people on a world scale and the concrete nature of Israel as an oppressor nation. It will address the deadly danger of the assimilationist illusions that wide layers in the Jewish population adopted in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, and which are also prevalent in the United States today. The class will also cover the weight and place of combating Jew-hatred in the proletarian struggle for socialist revolution in the United States.

One important book that will be studied and discussed during the socialist school is The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon. Volunteers in the Pathfinder Reprint Project have prepared this title in digital form and the Pathfinder printshop's volunteers are rushing to ensure this book is reprinted in time and available to all participants.

Those taking part in the school will also take time to focus on the political consequences of the historic changes in the family structure in the imperialist world, particularly in recent decades. They will draw on a Marxist understanding of the character and role of the family in class society as explained in classics such as The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Frederick Engels. Participants will discuss how changes in the nuclear family affect the fight by the working class for a social wage to protect its most vulnerable and marginalized layers. The vast amount of unpaid labor by women has been integral to social relations and the capitalist economy.

Right-wing and fascist forces have historically seized on the issue of the family in their ideological battles to try to confuse and divide working people and keep them from acting as a social force capable of moving humanity forward. Today they are demagogically focusing on the "dangers" of divorce, which is resulting in a growing number of households headed by "single women."

These historic changes will have substantial implications for the coming battles over workers' social wage and as part of the so-called culture war. The construction of revolutionary parties in all the imperialist countries will be shaped by the evolution of this change.

The opening presentation to the conference will be on "Factionalism and Polarization in U.S. Politics." It will explain how an accidental occurrence in bourgeois politics, such as the narrow outcome of the 2000 presidential vote, followed by the attempt by the Democratic Party to steal the election, led to the most intense factional struggle between the two major ruling-class parties since the events leading up to the impeachment proceedings against President William Clinton two years ago. The talk will take up how the U.S. capitalist rulers under the Bush administration will continue the bipartisan antilabor course of the Clinton White House and Republican-controlled Congress, and the opportunities for building a revolutionary workers party rooted in the working-class resistance today. Some reading for this class can be found in the Pathfinder title Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium by Jack Barnes.

For more information on this event, contact the Socialist Workers Party or the Young Socialists in your area (see ad on front page).  
 
 
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