Vol. 71/No. 8      February 26, 2007

The call for the January 27 march on Washington to demand “Bring the troops home now!” made a similar point, advancing the illusion that the new Democratic majority in Congress can be lobbied to end the war. That action was called by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a coalition that includes in its leadership the Communist Party and Committees of Correspondence, a split-off from the CPUSA, as well as liberal and pacifist groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, Green Party, and PAX Christi. “On Election Day the voters delivered a dramatic, unmistakable mandate for peace,” said the call for the UFPJ-initiated action. “Now Congress must act.”

But every time in history when opposition to imperialist war has swelled, including among most workers, the demand advanced by socialists, which has at times gained majority support, has been, “Let the people vote on war!” Take the war-making powers out of the hands of the government, including Congress!

The fact of the matter is that the November elections did not reflect a new, nationwide groundswell of popular opposition to the war. If that were true, why did Joseph Lieberman, a notorious warmongering Democrat who ran as an independent, win the senatorial election in Connecticut over his party’s nominee, the cable TV executive Ned Lamont, who called for a phased “redeployment” of U.S. troops in Iraq?

It’s also a false view promoted by groups such as the UFPJ that many in the Democratic majority in Congress oppose the war in Iraq. Many Militant articles and editorials in recent weeks have provided ample evidence to the contrary.

The institutions of bourgeois democracy in the United States—from the executive to the legislative branches of government, and beyond—do not and cannot represent the interests of the vast majority. They are instruments of the exploiting classes, and are used to advance the interests of the tiny minority of wealthy capitalists who rule the country and who profit from war.

At its founding in 1938, the Socialist Workers Party campaigned for a constitutional amendment that would require approval by a majority vote of the U.S. population in a nationwide referendum before the government could go to war.

The party and its press, read a statement printed in the May 21, 1938, edition of Socialist Appeal, “must become the most militant advocates of a popular referendum on the war. They must seek to have labor everywhere demand that the amendment be formulated to provide for a popular referendum on the undertaking of any war, be it allegedly ‘defensive’ or ‘aggressive,’ and that all citizens from the age of 18 upward, since from that age they are liable to military service, have the right to vote in the referendum.”

Between 1935 and 1941 Democratic congressman Louis Ludlow repeatedly proposed such an amendment. In 1938, a Gallup poll showed that 72 percent of the U.S. population supported it. It was nonetheless defeated in Congress every time it came up for a vote.

In a section titled “The Struggle Against Imperialism and War,” the Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International, adopted in 1938, addressed this issue.

“No democratic reform, it is understood, can by itself prevent the rulers from provoking war when they wish it,” said the document, which was drafted by Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. “But notwithstanding the illusions of the masses in regard to the proposed referendum, their support of it reflects the distrust felt by the workers and farmers toward the bourgeois government and Congress. Without supporting and without sparing illusions, it is necessary to support with all possible strength the progressive distrust of the exploited toward the exploiters.”

The SWP again campaigned for this demand during the Korean War, as opposition to it became widespread in the working class, including through massive draft resistance among Puerto Ricans.

In an open letter to the president and members of Congress in May 1951, SWP national secretary James P. Cannon wrote the following, which stands up well more than half a century later: “Your differences are merely tactical. My differences with both sides in your so-called ‘Great Debate’ are fundamental. You are preoccupied with the problem of how to conduct a war the American people do not want and never approved. I propose to end the war at once and let the American people themselves decide the life and death questions of foreign policy.”
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. forces in Iraq to ‘strike relentlessly’
Petraeus takes command of U.S. troops Iraqi gov’t closes borders with Iran, Syria
Washington claims Iranian-made explosives are used in Iraq
London uses ‘antiterror’ arrests to undermine democratic rights
Boston event features Iran’s UN ambassador
Washington to establish new Africa Command  
 
 
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