Margaret Winter, chief counsel for the plaintiffs at the trial, conducted the direct examination. Edward Williams, an assistant U.S. attorney, headed the government's defense. Federal District Judge Thomas Griesa presided over the trial. Copyright © 1988 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
 

Winter: Is the SWP based on any particular political doctrines?

Dobbs: Yes, yes. We are based on the fundamental doctrines of Marxism--referred to as scientific socialism.

Winter: Can you briefly describe what those doctrines are?

Dobbs: That is a large question but I'll try very hard to do it very briefly. Just the bare- bones fundamentals is what I'll try very briefly to outline.

The Marxist outlook is based on recognition of the fact that throughout class society, from the days of slavery in olden times through the stage of feudal society to the contemporary capitalist system, that the motive force of history has been a struggle between the exploiting classes on one side and the exploited classes on the other--between the oppressors on one side and the oppressed on the other.

In capitalist society, this struggle in the scientific socialistic view has its roots in the capitalist system of property relations. Capitalists hold the social means of production as private property that they seek to use to advance their own private interests at the expense of the general social welfare.

Commodities produced under the capitalist system are produced through the employment of wage labor by the capitalists. The value of the commodities produced represents the socially necessary labor that is congealed in the produced commodity.

A contest arises over the division between the capitalists on the one side and the workers on the other over this value. The capitalists--I am not speaking of individuals, but in general terms as a class--try to hold down the workers' share of the value produced to only that which is necessary for the subsistence of the working class and for its procreation. To the extent the capitalist succeeds he is able to appropriate more of the value for the amassing of capital through which he can expand his holdings and then amass more capital. It becomes an endless spiral.

The working class, on the other hand, is not content merely to subsist and to procreate. The working class aspires to advance toward an ever-improved state of life. This gives rise to an unending clash between the capitalist and the working class in contemporary society in this country. I'll just say in passing you have an example in the fact that the coal miners are on strike today.

The Marxist view is that the contradictions that lead to this condition are inherent in the capitalist form of property relations. The needs and the interests of the working class cannot therefore be solved under the capitalist system. It is necessary to abolish private property in the social means of production.

That doesn't mean somebody has two shirts, you take the second one. I am talking about the social means of production--its mines, mills, factories, railroads and so on--to have them owned and operated by the people as a collectivity. Perhaps I could sum it up by quoting as best I can from memory a passage at the conclusion of the Communist Manifesto in which it speaks of a social structure developing that is an association of producers in which the well-being of each is the condition for the well-being of all.

Winter: What does the SWP mean when it uses the word "revolution"?

Dobbs: We use the term "revolution" in the sense that--

Edward Williams: Objection, your Honor. I would ask that the witness respond to the question of what he means, rather than the SWP.

Griesa: That was the question.

Williams: The question, your Honor, was what does the SWP mean?

Griesa: Well, the objection is overruled.

Dobbs: In speaking of revolution, the term is used in the context that it is used generally in political science, whether it is socialist political science or capitalist political science. A revolution in political terminology relates only to a fundamental transformation in basic processes.

For example, within the historic era of capitalism, a tremendous leap took place in the forms of production through what was called the Industrial Revolution that began in England back in the eighteenth century. Basically, machine production was introduced after the invention of the engine, and it permitted an increasingly accelerating transformation from production by hand and with manual tools and so on to the machine form of production. That opened up whole new vistas for both qualitative and quantitative advancement in industrial output. That is why it was called a revolution.

When we speak of a revolution in the political sense, that is what we mean. A qualitative transformation from one basic form of social structure, capitalism, to a different basic form of social structure that we call socialism.

Winter: Does the SWP have any view on whether that revolution you have just referred to can be brought about by terrorism?

Dobbs: Yes.

Winter: And what is that view?

Dobbs: It is the view of the Socialist Workers Party that terrorism is the antithesis of what is required to bring about a fundamental social transformation.

Terrorism implies that self-appointed individuals can substitute themselves for the great mass of the people--and by acts of terror bring about a change while the mass stands around as onlookers, as though they were merely interested onlookers--watching something like a Super Bowl game. A concept of that nature is directly contradictory to what is needed--that is the cumulative process of the education and organization of the working class as a class, to act as a class in its own behalf. That is the only way that a social transformation can be brought about.

In addition to that, acts of terrorism serve as a pretext for the ruling class to impose restrictions on the democratic rights of the working people in building their own organizations and in carrying out their policies.  
 
 
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