Dollar Crisis Drives Attack on Us W We Comes

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But now, in a period of double-digit inflation in the USA, President Carter has called for a 7% limit on pay increases, linked to a supposed 6-6½% limit on prices.

Collision course

In other words Carter's government is set on a collision course with the workers' movement on pay.

.However, even since these measures were announced, still further attacks have been unleashed on American workers.

As the dollar sank like a stone on the international money markets earlier this month and the gold price soared, Carter was faced with the prospect that this chaos could severely disrupt the entire capitalist world economy.

He was forced to implement severe measures to restore confidence in the dollar. This meant arranging credits totalling $30 billion backed up by a sharp and dramatic credit squeeze at home and cutbacks in government spending which can only mean the prospect of recession in the key US economy.

In moves which foreshadowed a similar though smaller scale credit squeeze in Britain, Carter raised the base interest rate by 1% to a new record 9.5%6.

By raising the cos: of Dorsing tone, iis measure is designed to act-in the US and Britain alike-as a means of holding back industrial growth, and attracting foreign investment.

Unemployment

It offers improved profits to bankers and speculators, while forcing ailing sections of industry to the wall and increasing the number of unemployed.

Carter also raised the amount of cash reserves the banks are obliged to hold-thus again restricting the amount of money available for loans to individuals and industry, and pressuring US bankers to borrow dollars on the international market rather than issue them from their own stocks.

This, it is hoped, will create an artificial demand to drive up the price of the billions of increasingly devalued paper dollars now circulating in Europe and elsewhere as a result of years of chronic US trade deficits.

But in doing so, Carter is taking another step towards recession at home.

And in a move to hold down the soaring price of gold, which had risen to a record $242.60 per ounce as a result of the growing lack of confidence in paper currencies, Carter decided to increase sales of gold from the Fort Knox hoard to 1.5 million ounces a month.

His hope is that such a volume of gold released onto the market will force down the price and thus restore some credibility for paper dollars.

But he knows all too well that such trickery will not resolve the problem so long as government spending continues. at a huge deficit, and low productivity levels in US industry hold back profitability.

An all-out attack by employers on the living standards and working conditions of the American working class is essential for US capitalism.

Carter's "anti-inflation" plan has already axed social services and 20,000 Federal jobs in the public sector. But this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Workers face an onslaught on all sides.

Carter's watered down "energy policy" , designed to cut the huge US oil deficit will drive up prices, force confrontation in the coal industry, and threaten jobs, while decontrolled prices of natural gas will increase domestic fuel bills.

Income tax cuts and cuts in taxes on businesses benefit only managers and capitalists, while the 'cuts' are more than clawed back from workers by an increase in social security tax.

Even the Wall Street Journal pointed out that:

"The taxpayers have been had again ... Taxes still are going up, not down...

Prior to the emergency dollar support measures, Carter was reportedly preparing drastic cutbacks in government spending during the current year: there is little doubt that he will now proceed with such an "austerity" programme.

In this he will be backed up by the increasingly right wing administrations at state level within the US. The recent mid-term elections featured panels of Democrat and Republican candidates so reactionary that even arch right winger Ronald Reagan declared with satisfaction that "There were no liberals in this campaign"

Cut budgets

Candidates from the Republican "Grand Old Party" and the allegedly 'friend of labour' Democratic Party vied with each other in prociamations of hostility to the working class-in particular hostility to public service workers-and in attempts to outbid eachother's promises to cut state budgets and thus minimise taxes.

Nearly all of the 77 newly elected candidates are pledged to such policies.

Proposals to limit public spending were passed in four states; and in six others proposals to cut taxes were approved.

Such policies, however, were not expected to, and did not, win the support of American workers. A mere 37% of the registered electorate turned out to take a choice between a Republican Tweedledee or a including incentive schemes to ensure that trade unionists registered to vote-ensured that the reactionary proposition was thrown out by 60% to 40%..

Ban on gays

Unfortunately no. such labour movement mobilisation was undertaken in California, the largest US state.

Despite this, however, an extreme right wing proposal that would have banned known homosexuals from teaching was rejected.

Re elected Democrat Governor Jerry Brown had opposed the measure, but so, surprisingly had Republican Ronald Reagan, and the rejection of this proposition therefore went strangely alongside the massive support to a proposal to expand the state's death penalty laws, and the surprise election of Republican lieutenant governor.

An even more tight-fisted Congress and an even more right wing network of State governors now faces a working class whose fighting spirit is indicated by militant struggles ove the last 12 months and determined abstention from the mockery of elections in which there are effectively no workers candidates.

This situation strikes fear into the heart of the US trade union bureaucracy. Least of all do these wealthy parasites on the workers' movement wish to see the flowering of a political movement independent of the bourgeois parties.

But at the same time they find the old-style collusion with the Democrats more difficult than ever.

Sackings

Carter is not only refusing to lift a finger to implement election pledges such as national health insurance; but he is actually imposing wage controls, federal sackings, social service cuts and tax increases.

Carter's attempt to up to 9.5%-and the deregulation of gas prices will raise energy costs by. up to $50 billion.

Union leaders are plainly reluctant to police Carter's wage controls. 84-year old AFL-CIO chief George Meany has issued a series of sharp rebukes to Carter -though not on the policy itself.

Sooner than stand in the front line of wage controls, Meany and his co-thinkers including AFL-CIO secretarytreasurer Lane Kirkland have demanded statutory wage and price controls!

Distanced

Other sections of the union bureaucracy have attempted to distance themselves still further from Carter's policies. United Rubber Workers leader Peter Bommarito has declared that he will not be paying attention to the • voluntary guidelines in next April's review for 75,000 workers.

Machinists' union boss William Winpisinger has , also tolo his negotiators to ignore Carter's guidelines and a 39% three-year deal for 4,000 Texas. machinists has just been signed.

60,000 Oil, Chemical and Atomic workers; 150,000 Electrical workers; 150,000 garment workers; 700,000 construction workers and 750,000 Auto workers next year join the 400,000 Teamsters in the pay struggle.

As they face growing inflation and mounting attacks from the employers in the drive for speed-up and rationalisation, they will increasingly take their cue from the historic struggle of the United Mine Workers earlier this year.

But the dilemma to be resolved is the complete lack of a leadership within the organised workers' movement that will fight for the political independence of the working class.

A clear break is needed from coilaboration with Democrats and Republicans.

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I conference of union bureaucrat and radical campaign leaders REGION I:A. OMENS COUTU UAW banner on an ERA demonstration uP GAS o wild during the dollar crisis ON Recent statements MT bv e whole number of union bureaucrats including public sector leader Jerry Wurt, as well as Winpisinger, reflect a growing pressure for such a break within the ranks of the working class and their anxiety to see it headed off.

United Auto Workers leader Douglas Fraser has been at the head of the pack, with his broken hearted complaint in July that the employers were conducting a "one-sided class war" which had broken the "fragile, unwritten compact" with union leaders!

Eracar isant an from thic to Fraser went on trom tnis to convene a meeting of selected top bureaucrats from the trade union movement, liberal groupings and 'left' Democratic ginger groups in Detroit last month.

Represented were 30 union bureaucracies, including a number of unions regarded as staunch conservative followers of George Meany within the AFL-CIO.

But if any workers had looked to such a grouping. as offering an alternative to the Democrats they were to be sadly disillusioned.

Instead, speaker after speaker got to the rostrum to demand a "reform" of the Democratic Party.

American Indian Movement interrupted the speech-making by union bureaucrats and such hopeless groupings as the "Democratic Socialists' Organising Committee" to propose the organisation of:

"a political party which would truly represent the people."

This contribution was completely out of tune with a conference that clearly agreed with Fraser's earlier statement that:

"We're not in favour of a labour party. We don't think it's feasible. We don't think it's a viable idea at this point in American history. It's just not a good idea at the current time in the American political scene. It just simply cannot work.

But 63% of the registered US electorate plainly believe that the present structure of two capitalist parties cannot work.

Radical right wing

And a booklet issued by the AFL-CIO which spells out the anti-union strategy of the "New radical right wing" political groups indicates clearly that the launching of a labour party is easily within the organisational grasp of the trade union movement.

Arguing simply for a vote Platform at the UAW-convenea against the "Radical right" • the booklet concludes by pointing out:

«We have the numbers. If we register our members, if we educate them to this threat ... if we get out our vote on election day ... we'll win.

"They have the money... but we can raise enough money to ensure adequate funding for candidates we endorse.

"We have the educational apparatus. They have wild propaganda. We have labor publications-international unions, and local councils, thousands of local unions. We must use them as educational tools.

"We have direct access to all members through the mails [!] When they hear directly from their local union, their state and local councils, their international union, they listen, Experience in previous campaigns has proved this." (Workers' Foes • They're Going For Broke)

Drum up votes Meany and Kirkland want this strength used to drum up votes for the Democrats. But Meany ATIO their argument is equally valid to demonstrate the viability of a labour party in the USA.

In fighting for such political break, Trotskyists campaign. not for simply a section of Democratic politicians to change their Party name and proceed with the same policies.

Nor do we argue for the building of a party confined to the reformist perspective of the British Labour Party, whose "socialism" is restricted to a form of words but which remains in practice at the level of seeking peaceful parliamentary reforms within capitalism.

We argue that in making a historic break from the parties of the capitalist class, the American workers' movement should also adopt a programme which fully asserts its independent class interests-a programme of democratic and transitional demands starting from. today's conditions and today's consciousness, and leading workers to grasp the necessity for social revolution.

No ultimatum However we are in no position to put forward an ultimatum to the working class. Should sections of * the US labour movement begin-however partially and hesitantly. and on however limited a programme-to break from the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie and form an independent working class party, we would regard this as a step forward.

While fighting continuously for the programme of this new party to be in line with our perspective we would support such moves, and try to develop them further.

Many the dogstive conditions for the formation of such a party are now rapidly maturing in today's intensified economic and political crisis in the USA.

Fraser ritantain Public sector union leader Wurf What is lacking is an adequate revolutionary movement that clearly grasps the necessity of the fight at all stages for the political independence of the working class.

The largest group in the USA calling itself Trotskyist-the Socialist Workers Party-has deserted this basic element of revolutionary politics.

Single issues

Its intervention into the mid-term election campaign was a long horror story of single issue protests • and opportunist evasion.

Thousands of copies of its "Emergency Bill to Provide Jobs For All " were circulated in their campaign.

VAN Yet the gist of their bill as summarised in the SWP's weekly paper The Militant is almost indistinguishable from a utopian Democratic "New Deal"_ omitting any reference at all to "What's really needed to combat unemployment is the emergency job bill proposed by the candidates of the Socialist Workers Party. That bill would:

*Provide . unemployment compensation at union scale for all those without jobs.

*Take the present $126 billion war budget and use it to finance public works programme to clean up and rebuild this country.

*Reduce the workweek to thrity hours, with no reduction in pay.

*Institute a programme of affirmative-action quotas to end discrimination in hiring, training and promotion for women, DIaCKs Bicans, Chicanos, and Puerto (Militant, October Hogwash Such a programme would not only not solve unemploy. ment (what about the workers in the $126 • billion arms industry?), but amounts to no more than redistributing the material resources already existing within the capitalist system.

Yet this appalling liberal hogwash is retailed as a "socialist" answer.

But perhaps worst of all, in a period when both the capitalist parties and the labour bureaucracy have been doing everything in their power to divert the working class away from political action and industrial action to win their demands, is the way in which this SWP "bill" profers a purely parliamentary way forward for the working class.

As such it harmonises completely with other aspects of the SWP's propaganda.

Uncritical

Agitation on women's rights is focussed around uncritical support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which numbers right wing Republicans as well Regic Regiona UAW as numerous Democrats supporters.

No answer By John Winpist iger right wing amongst its And, carried away by the large scale of some of the cross-class demonstrations called to back the ERA, the Socialist Workers Party suggests that mere demonstrations can win far more sweeping concessions from the employers.

"We need more demonstrations like that-with the full power of the UAW and all labour behind them-to win the ERA and other urgent needs of working people. For example:

*A shorter workweek with no cut in pay to provide millions of jobs.

*Free top quality health care for all.

*An end to Washington's military spending, to free billions of dollars for jobs and social services... (etc)"

(Militant October 20)

Of course token protests and demonstrations-however bigwill not force such concessions from the vicious US employers.

And once again the article leaves out the key demand for the nationalisation of industry without which public works programmes become merely state handouts for chosen employers.

Another aspect of the SWP campaign can be seen in their tail-ending of the anti-nuclear bandwagon.

Here the demands put forward are equally dire and the politics of one SWP leaflet on the issue and the popular frontist Mobilisation for Survival in which the party is involved smack strongly of the Communist Party.

"In its first year the Mobilisation for Survival has made an important contribution to the struggle for worid peace by mobilising people in the tens of thousands for nuclear disarmament."

The confusion of demands at the end is devoid of any programme for action by the working class:

"Zero nuclear weapons! Ban nuclear power! Fund human needs! Stop the Arms Race! Hands off Cuba! US out of Africa and Iran!"

The Mobilisation for Survival according to The Militant includes:

"a broad range of peace, religious and political groups"

"These include American Friends Service Committee, War Resisters' League, SWP, Clergy and Laity Concerned !!, Rocky Flats Action Group and various anti-nuclear power alliarices."

Such methods and alliances -shown in every aspect of the SWP's political work-offer no way forward for the US workers' movement.

What is needed is an all-out struggle for the demands and method of the Trotskyist Transitional Programme in the context of a fight throughout the trade union movement for a break from the Democrats and the building of a Labour Party.

There is no short cut around such a course of action; but today's conditions in the class struggle in the USA provide the best opportunity for such a fight for many years.

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