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| Jerry White, Phyllis Scherrer SEP U.S. 2012 Presidential Vice presidential candidates |
Nation Magazine’s lesser-of-two-evils choice furthering suppression
of mass socialist movement of working class
Excerpting, editing by
Carolyn Bennett
In September of this year, writer and Socialist Equality
Party National Secretary Joseph Kishore introduced to his party a resolution emphasizing
the international class struggle. The resolution states in part ─
The
intensification of global economic crisis is leading inexorably to the
resurgence of class struggle within the United States and throughout the world.…
It
is not enough to predict the inevitability of revolutionary struggles and then
await their unfolding…
The
Socialist Equality Party must do everything it can to develop, prior to the
outbreak of mass struggles, a significant political presence within the working
class ─ above all, among its most advanced elements.
The resolution notes that the ruling class, in seeking to
maintain its political and ideological domination, relies on the services of
innumerable ‘left’ organizations. Referring to the sections of the resolution
dealing with the role of these organizations, Kishore said ─
The
past year and a half have provided the working class with many crucial lessons
on the importance of leadership, and, related to this, the role of the middle
class pseudo-left.
Today the World Socialist Web Site published Joseph Kishore’s
latest article: “The Nation magazine and the campaign to reelect Obama.” This
is some of what Kishore had to say.
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| Socialist Equality Party National Secretary Joseph Kishore |
Unconscionable leadership, Nation supports U.S. Middle East/Persian
war expansion
The Nation is hustling votes for a president who asserts the
presidential “‘right’ to [kill] anyone, including U.S. citizens, without any
judicial process, … a man who holds weekly meetings at which he personally
signs off on drone assassinations ─ knowing that those killed will include
innocent men, women and children.”
Kishore continues, “Notably absent from any of these
articles in the Nation is any serious analysis of U.S. military policy, outside
of a reference to the administration’s supposed ‘ending’ of the war [in fact, hostile
U.S. presence still exists on the ground] in Iraq.
This
is because the Nation [magazine] and the social forces that it represents fully
support the administration’s expansion of war, including the assault on Libya
and the current stoking up of a civil war in Syria.
“None of the writers refers to plans underway for launching
military action against Iran in the aftermath of the elections, regardless of
who is elected.
“Such a war could quickly escalate into a confrontation with
China and Russia, which the Nation Magazine would find a way to support.”
Nation pandering to upper crust
The Nation Magazine, Kishore says, speaks for “a layer of
the upper-middle class,” which is concerned not about “Romney’s viciously
anti-working class agenda” but about “their own positions and privileges linked
to the fortunes of the Democratic Party”; and who have done quite well under
Obama —
Sections of the trade union
bureaucracy,
Tenured professors at elite
universities,
Well-paid journalists in the orbit
of the political establishment and employed by Democratic Party think tanks,
Better-off sections of minority
populations
[The Obama government] has offered
them ‘space,’ soliciting their services in policing the working class and
maintaining the political order.
The Nation Magazine and its constituency, Kishore says, “are
far more concerned about the danger of an independent movement of the working
class” than they are about “the anti-working class and militarist policies of
the Obama administration” or the “wage cutting, unemployment and attacks on
education and health care.”
What concerns the Nation Magazine’s constituency, Kishore says, is upper-middle class layers’ sensitive
to ─
[t]he potential for a movement from
below, outside of the Democratic Party, which would threaten their own social
and political position.
“Their social grievances and their opposition to the
Republicans,” he says, “reflect [their] dissatisfaction with the distribution
of wealth within the top 10 percent ─ not [concerns about] the lowering of living
standards of the bottom 60 percent.
“They exclude any genuinely popular and democratic
alternative, a socialist alternative to the two-party system [This rings true
for me as I observe the pseudo-left Democracy
Now program’s exclusion of and discrimination against certain political
parties such as the Socialist Equality Party and others from their “expanded”
editions paralleling the exclusive Commission on Presidential Debates-controlled
U.S. 2012 presidential debates].
Beyond “evils” to real choice
“The elections—an
undemocratic and highly manipulated contest between two right-wing
representatives of the American financial oligarchy—do present workers and
young people with a real choice,” Kishore says. “It is not, as the Nation Magazine
would have it, [a choice] between the ‘lesser of two evils.’|
“
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t is instead the choice of taking up the struggle to build a
mass socialist movement of the working class ─ in opposition to a capitalist
system incapable of meeting the basic needs of the people and the political
establishment [including the Nation Magazine and its constituency] that defends
that system.”
Sources and notes
Joseph Kishore is National Secretary of the Socialist
Equality Party and writer (regular contributor) for the World Socialist Web
Site, wsws.org, Michigan, USA http://www.socialequality.com
September 2012: The incoming National Committee of the
Socialist Equality Party reelected Joseph Kishore as national secretary,
Lawrence Porter as assistant national secretary, and Barry Grey as World
Socialist Web Site national editor.
“The Nation magazine and the campaign to reelect Obama” (by
Joseph Kishore), World Socialist Web Site wsws.org, October 22, 2012, Copyright
© 1998-2012 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/nati-o22.shtml
SOCIALIST EQUALITY PARTY
Chairman: David North, Joe Kishore
Founded: 1966 (as Workers League)
Headquarters Socialist Equality Party: PO Box 48377, Oak
Park, MI 48237
Ideology: Trotskyism, socialism
Political position: Fiscal: Socialist economics
Social: Anti-war, pro-choice, against identity politics
International affiliation: International Committee of the
Fourth International Website
http://www.socialequality.com
STRUGGLES
Auto workers
Teachers
Students and Young People
The Fight against Utility Shutoffs
ISSUES
The Social Rights of the Working Class
Expropriate the Banks and Corporations
For Social Equality
Oppose Militarism and War
Defend Democratic Rights
_____________________________________
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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