This calls for the building of a two-class party, which has never been proposed by the Militant. Such a two-class (or more) party is not the instrument for organizing our class and its allies to take power out of the hands of the capitalist ruling class. The creation of a workers and farmers government, a government including the workers and farmers and their allies, is absolutely necessary. But the party needed to lead the exploited and oppressed is a proletarian party—overwhelmingly proletarian in composition and in its program.

The working class must be led by a revolutionary party of workers that can forge an alliance not only with the exploited farmers but also other layers of the exploited and oppressed, including the so-called “middle classes.”

In spite of their small numbers (relative to the working class) farmers play a vastly more important role in the economy than other layers of the exploited, such as small-business owners, shop keepers, artisans, etc.

Does that mean that farmers should not be admitted into membership of a communist party? No. There will be some farmers and rural proletarians who are inclined to accept the party’s program and act upon it as disciplined communist revolutionaries. But that is very different from organizing a workers’ and farmers’ party.

The question of the class character of a revolutionary party is one more area where the continuity of revolutionary leadership and the historic lessons gathered by the Bolsheviks must be united with the day-to-day work of communist workers in the unions and the struggle for unions where they do not exist now. Just as we would not permit members of the Kingston clan in Utah to vote in an election for a union, even though some or many of them are exploited by their millionaire leaders, we would not permit people with opposed or contradictory class allegiances to play a role in the formulation of the program or the organization of the work of a revolutionary party, even though they are debt slaves to banks and exploited by the ruling class of capitalists.

The dangers of letting the leadership of other classes substitute for the leadership that only a communist party can provide are exactly what is being played out in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and in half a dozen countries in Latin America, including Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia.

Robin Maisel
Waco, Texas
 
 
Euthanasia
Readers of the Militant may be aware that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the challenge by the Bush administration to the Oregon law permitting physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Currently Oregon is the only U.S. state where it is legal.

The hypocrisy of the position is staggering when we consider the numbers of senior citizens, ill, and disabled people who want to and cannot get the drugs or treatments they need to stay alive. But the Oregon law is also an important advance for human freedom, in that it gives all of us an option we may want to have at some point in our lives. The existence of that option, even if not resorted to in many cases, can be a great comfort to the terminally ill and their families.

The same forces that oppose abortion rights generally oppose this type of right-to-die legislation, and for the same reactionary reasons.

The public debate on this and related topics was given a boost recently by the blockbuster movie Million Dollar Baby, in which Clint Eastwood’s character was warned by a Catholic priest that his soul would be beyond redemption if he assisted such a suicide. This is not the conclusion of the movie’s narrator, however, nor is it the conclusion that most viewers are left with, in my opinion.

Mindy Brudno
Wynantskill, New York
 
 
Death row in Florida
Juan Roberto Melendez, who spent 17 years, 8 months, and 1 day on death row in the state of Florida, has been speaking out against the death penalty since his release in July 2002. He spoke March 2 at the First United Church of Tampa along with Abe Bonowitz of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Melendez was born in Brooklyn and raised in Puerto Rico. At 18 he came to the U.S. working as a migrant fruit picker. In May 1984 he was arrested in Pennsylvania, charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery—crimes he did not commit. He was extradited to Florida. The entire trial and sentencing took five days.

Melendez spoke no English and had no interpreter. Melendez described the horrible conditions and treatment he and the 247 other condemned men received on death row at the Florida State Penitentiary in Stark.

After a number of years and the loss of several appeals, a new lawyer was appointed to Melendez’s case. A new investigator found a tape recording of another person confessing to the crime.

Both defense and prosecutors had it in their possession a month before trial. This and other exculpatory evidence also held back by prosecutors during Melendez’s trial led to his release. Twenty-five prisoners on death row in the state of Florida have been exonerated since 1972. There are currently 366 men and one woman on Florida’s death row.

Rachele Fruit
Tampa, Florid  
 
 
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