The Chicago mayoral elections are coming up. (See article below on the favorite and the role of the union leaders.) Once again working people have no one to vote for, no one to organize around, no one to build a movement around. So the field is open to the Capitalist Parties and the Capitalist monopoly of politics in the city continues. This above all is the responsibility of the Union leaders. Instead of supporting the Capitalist Party the Democrats, the Chicago Federation of Labor and all the unions in the city should be mobilizing their members around a candidate and a program to improve their lives, to organize the unorganized and to build a mass working peoples party.
The union leaders by continuing to support the Democrats, one of the bosses Capitalist parties, are forfeiting their right to lead the union and workers movement. An organized opposition movement must be built in the unions, the workplaces and the communities so that the right wing pro Capitalist stranglehold of the union leaders on the movement can be broken. We always have to make clear this role of the union leaders and to raise it and raise the need for an alternative in the working class movement.
This issue and the need to build an alternative should be raised at all union bodies and workplaces. Resolutions should be moved to prevent the union leaders supporting the Democrats and instead to build a fighting working class movement and run a working peoples candidate. This candidate to be on the basis of unconditional opposition to the Capitalist offensive against working people, that is no wage or jobs cuts, instead increased wages and a $15.00 an hour minimum wage or a $5.00 an hour increase whichever is the greater, guaranteed jobs for all through a public works program at union rates, benefits and rights, a shorter work week with no loss in pay, no foreclosures affordable housing for all, free education and health care at the point of use for all, end all wars and occupations, cut military spending and increase the taxes on the rich to fund social, education and health programs.
On this basis an alternative can be built. On this basis also we can begin to take even greater steps forward. One recent opinion poll showed that 36% of Americans looked favorably on socialism. Now it is inevitable that there will some confusion concerning what is meant by socialism. But with no mass force campaigning for socialism, with the entire resources of Capitalism and the union leadership being used to either never mention or to vilify socialism this is a very important figure. It shows the enormous potential to build a socialist movement in the US. The fighting united front that we propose could open up the road to the emergence a mass socialist alternative. While we have to continuously point out the incorrect, to put it mildly, role of the union leaders, we also have to look at the role of the left and anti capitalist and radical movement.
In Chicago there are hundreds of people involved in these movements. There are many hundreds, in fact thousands, who would become involved if they saw an alternative with a clear program such as set out above and where people were working together as a direct action fight to win united front and without the left sectarianism and ultra leftism which are so prevalent in, and so damaging to the workers movement. The union leaders have the power to put a mass based working peoples candidate in the field and we have to always point this out and demand they do so, but the left and anti capitalist movement have the resources to see that the vacuum that exists is at least partially filled and the anger that is out there has somewhere to go.
The left and anti capitalist movement in the city bears some of the blame for there not being an anti capitalist candidate for mayor with some sort of base that would be seen as credible. The reason the left and anti capitalist movement have not been able to build this alternative is because of the scourge of left sectarianism and ultra leftism in their ranks. Their left sectarianism means they put what they see as their own (narrow) interests above the interests of the movement and the working class. They are always putting as a priority recruiting a few members more than some other left group or "proving" their ideas more correct and "pure." They are always seeking some miniscule advantage for themselves at the expense of the movement. Their ultra leftism consists of not recognizing the real existing consciousness of the working class, not reaching out and connecting with that consciousness and helping this to develop and build into an organized force to confront the offensive of Capitalism.
They speak to the working class in esoteric language which makes it impossible for them to connect with the working class, or at other times when there is the hint of a movement of the working class they rush to seek to engage the working class in the most "RRRevolutionary" language which also cuts them off from the working class. And then at other times if in spite of themselves they do get some influence in a movement they are in danger of taking the opportunist road and making concessions which derail the potential movement. For a struggle against the pro-capitalist policies of the union leaders including their continuing support for the Capitalist democratic Party. For a working class alternative in the Chicago mayoral elections, for the building of a working peoples party. For an end to the left sectarianism and ultra leftism of the left and radical movement which has only damaging affects on the workers movement and blocks the potential influence of these forces.
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