The segment we are living in today is marked above all by world capitalism's evolution, signaled by the 1987 stock market crash and growing strains on the imperialist banking system, toward a depression and social crisis....

Working people and youth have been attracted to discussions about the war at meetings of the Militant Labor Forum. The number of cities around the country where these forums now take place almost every weekend has grown in the process.

Large slates of Socialist Workers candidates for state and local office have been able to explain more broadly how working people can organize to resist the capitalists' attacks on our rights and living standards at home by fighting against the imperialist system responsible for war, exploitation, racism, the subjugation of women, and other forms of oppression.

In carrying out this campaign, we have consciously avoided the political trap of functioning as communist workers in peacetime, and then sliding toward acting as radical pacifists in wartime. We act as the communist component of the vanguard of the working class, at all times and under all conditions. We have been confident that a working-class campaign carried out in this way will be politically attractive to and will draw in fighters--whatever their social background, especially among the youth--who oppose imperialist war, who want to understand the roots of such wars, and who seek ways to act on their convictions.

From that standpoint, we joined with others in building united action to organize local, regional, and national demonstrations and protest meetings during Washington's seven-month-long war. We understood how important public protests are in defending the space for political organization and action--both in opposition to the war, and around other labor and social issues. We recognized that these events are arenas where communists can meet and have political discussions with large numbers of young people who can be won to a working-class political perspective, to the fighting traditions of the communist workers' movement.

From the outset, as I pointed out earlier, the fractions of party members in ten North American industrial unions have been providing a special impulse and energy to getting the party on a campaign footing. These worker-bolsheviks are members of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union; International Association of Machinists; International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union; International Union of Electronic Workers; Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers; United Auto Workers; United Food and Commercial Workers; United Mine Workers; United Steelworkers; and the United Transportation Union.

These communist workers went to the heat looking for every opportunity on the job and in the unions to explain and discuss the character of, and help organize opposition to, imperialism and its drive toward war. We joined with co-workers and unionists at antiwar protests and continue to bring them to political meetings to discuss the war, its ongoing consequences, and other political questions....  
 
'We' versus 'they'
The big-business media, capitalist politicians, and the labor officialdom have consciously sought to confuse working people about who "we" are and who "they" are as we think about--and discuss what to do about--the U.S. war and its consequences for the people of that region and the world. Working to clearly explain and counter this confusion, in the many forms it keeps cropping up, has been central to an effective campaign by worker-bolsheviks against imperialism and war.

For example, the enormous disparity between the handful of U.S. combat deaths in the Gulf and the slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis underlines the political disorientation and chauvinism reinforced by those in antiwar organizations and coalitions who centered their opposition to the war drive on the prospect of large numbers of U.S. body bags returning from the Gulf.

This is exactly what the bipartisan war makers in Washington had counted on! For unconditional opponents of the U.S. war drive, the starting point had to be what the imperialist assault was going to mean for all the working people in the Gulf--in uniform and out, whatever country they came from. We refuse to make any distinction between the life of an Iraqi soldier or civilian and that of a U.S. soldier or civilian--or a Yemeni, Filipino, Palestinian, Egyptian, Pakistani, or Syrian toiler caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We are part of an international class--the workers of the world--along with our allies among the oppressed and exploited of all countries. Imperialism is a world system. Its victims, and its gravediggers, are toilers who have been brought together in a single world by the expansion of capitalism over the past century. For most of the history of humanity, the world's toilers were almost entirely isolated from each other, but we and our fortunes have been tied together by the world imperialist system....

Bending to the rulers' patriotic drive has taken a wide variety of forms since last August. We have had to debate and clarify each one as we resisted efforts by bourgeois liberals and petty-bourgeois radicals to politically divert the struggle against the war.  
 
Government of the employers

• We explained to our co-workers and others why the U.S. government is not "our" government, but the government of the employers, of the capitalists, of the imperialist exploiters and oppressors of working people the world over--"their" government. Thus, nothing that "their" government and "their" army did would help our class brothers and sisters, fellow working people in the Gulf, throw off the tyranny of landlord-capitalist regimes in the region--whether Saddam Hussein in Iraq, other Bonapartist capitalist regimes such as those in Egypt and Syria, or the varied monarchies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan.
• We opposed those who argued that "our government" has the right to blockade Iraq and Kuwait--or to intervene in the affairs of any peoples, anywhere in the world. We pointed out the devastating consequences of this act of war for the lives of our fellow working people in the Gulf. We explain that the embargo was part of Washington's war preparations that inevitably culminated in the U.S.-organized bombardment and invasion of Iraq. We call for an end to the blockade, and the immediate exemption of food and medicines. We explained how the effects of the embargo come down on the common people of Iraq--not the privileged or their government.
• We explained why any variant of slogans such as, "Support our boys, bring them home!" is a disorienting concession to the rulers' patriotic prowar propaganda. The GIs, in their great majority, are from our class and its allies; they are workers and farmers in uniform. But the U.S. armed forces are "their troops"--the troops of the U.S. imperialist government and the handful of wealthy capitalist families it represents. (We should also note that, in comparison to the Vietnam War, a substantially larger percentage of the "boys" in the Gulf were actually women--6 percent. At the time of the Vietnam War 1.5 percent of the U.S. armed forces were women, where today the figure has jumped to 11 percent.)
• We insisted that yellow ribbons--no matter who was wearing them, or for what individual reasons--play the same role as an American flag in bolstering patriotic support for the war. It doesn't matter whether the person wearing the yellow ribbon (or a flag) is a worker, a lawyer, or a capitalist; white, Black, Puerto Rican, or Chinese. It doesn't matter if he or she was persuaded to wear it by a neighbor, or is understandably concerned about a son or daughter stationed in the Gulf. We opposed liberals and radicals in the trade union officialdom or various coalitions who suggested attaching yellow ribbons to antiwar buttons, or wearing a different-colored ribbon. This is an objective political question. The ribbon's practical meaning and impact in politics is nothing more than a capitulation to patriotic, prowar pressure in a sentimental guise. The worker can change his or her mind, but the ribbon can't change its function.
• Communists explained that there is also no "we" on the international level that papers over the class division between the capitalist exploiters and exploited workers and farmers, or between oppressed and oppressor nations. There can be no solution to wars in the Middle East or elsewhere enforced by a classless "international community" or "international organization." That is true whether the agency involved is the United Nations or some "Arab peacekeeping force"--the true role of which, in both cases, has been further exposed by the U.S. war in the Gulf.

During the buildup to the U.S. war and during the bombing and invasion itself, these patriotic pressures bore down with increasing weight on the radical currents that politically dominated the leaderships of various antiwar action coalitions on a local and national level. Especially following the large January 26 demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area, these forces increasingly retreated from a perspective of mobilizing united actions against the war. It was among young people that the greatest opposition to Washington's war was manifested. Youth- and student-led committees were at the fore of efforts to organize ongoing public protests, such as the February 21 meetings and rallies on campuses and in cities and towns across the country....

In the face of the rulers' tightening wartime pressures on democratic rights, the greatest protection for communists and other vanguard fighters in the working class is to go deeper into our class and its organizations and to press to the furthest limits possible the space for political organization and activity--from the factory floor through all the institutions of capitalist society. We need to encourage debate and discussion. We need to encourage co-workers and other unionists to join with us--and with other opponents of the war--in protests, public meetings, and demonstrations....

At such times, it is more important than ever for revolutionary-minded workers to reaffirm the truth explained in the founding program of our movement, The Communist Manifesto, that communists "disdain to conceal their views and aims." We explain and advocate the same things to our co-workers and to the broader working-class public as we do our to our members and supporters.  
 
 
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