Behind Cabinet reshuffles US BOSSES FACE POLITICAL CRISIS

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anxiously denied that Carter has taken leave of his senses.

But with a succession of humiliating setbacks including Iran and Nicaragua spelling out the weakness of US imperialism, inflation now at an annual rate of. 13.2%, a weak dollar, a mounting trade deficit, spiralling oil prices and gathering storm clouds of recession both at home and on a world scale, Carter has good reason to feel far from bright, breezy and confident.

Violent

The great unanswered question which has yet to reveal itself to the full is exactly how violently the powerful American working class will react to the policies required by US capitalism to weather the present storm.

But the US capitalists themselves in both of the two main parties are completely divided on what line to put forward on the present crisis.

Carter's frantic reshuffling of sor of Song i his a ministers-exchanging a trialists tor some nIS lESS successful initial , nomineesindicates the scale of the problem he faces in putting forward a firm and united government policy.

So obvious is the crisis of leadership facing US capitalism that even while the purge went on in the White House and Carter's personal popularity sank below even the nadir of Nixon at Watergate time, his main Democratic rival for the 1980 election-Senator Edward Kennedy-was ostentatiously putting forward an alternative $58 billion energy plan in opposition to Carter's $143 billion scheme.

Indeed major spokesmen from Carter's own party are publicly abandoning him even as he makes his most determined effort to restore the authority of the Presidency in order to force through his energy policy.

Democratic party Senators for instance brazenly ignored Carter's recent image-building television news conference-in favour of attending a plush Washington dinner party.

Posturing

Senator George McGovern, a leading liberal Democrat, has advocated that Kennedy be the party's candidate in 1980, and accused Carter (with some justice) of. "moral posturing, public manipulation and political ineptitude:"

And another. Democratic opinion maker, Scoop Jackson, predicted that if Carter does run in 1980 he will be driven out in the early primaries and Kennedy would take the nomination. He tried to soften the blow by adding, "l don't want to push him out as of now!"

sorta RUNE capable of pressing home the policies required by capitalism while appearing to respond to the workers' movement.

Carter's name and image on the other hand is now irrevocably linked to the traumatic spectacle of the petrol queues and spiralling prices which have hit US workers like a bolt from the blue, and raised a new awareness of the role played in the US economy by the giant monopolies.

According to opinion polls, 75% of Americans believe that the oil monopolies deliberately created the shortages to bolster their own profits.

Another survey in California showed that in the heart of "free enterprise" America only 56% of those asked were opposed to nationalising the oil firms.

This is why Carter's thoroughly capitalist "solution" to the US energy crisis is tinged with the populist gesture of a "windfall profits tax"' on the oil firms.

But this will be of little satisfaction to workers who will face a steep rise in prices for the petrol they need to get to work

THANK YOU

SEN. KENNEDY, FOR THAT ROUSING INTRODUCTION... each day for the oil they need for central heating.

Nor does the rest of Carter's plan offer any hope to workers. The freezing of oil imports to below the record 1977 level of 8.8 million barrels per day will be easy under conditions of a world recession-but that same recession means unemployment and speed-up.

And the target of a 4.5 million barrels per day cut in imports by 1990 will take place only if the oil monopolies can achieve suitably high prices and profit margins to make domestic production worthwhile.

'Lula' addressing Carter's planned Energy Security Corporation is little more than a straight state subsidy for the research and development programmes of the oil firms, and offers them guaranteed loans, guaranteed prices and guaranteed markets for their output.

And his "Energy Mobilisation Board" will supervise the railroading of plans for nuclear power plants, mining operations and synthetic fuel plants through existing flimsy environmental protection laws.

Needless to say the energy monopolies are weli pleased with the whole plan. The response of US workers to' the wholesale attack on their living standards, however, is yet to be fully revealed.

Certainly the ail party line-up in defence of the interests of the oil monopolies must again confirm the necessity for the US trade union movement to break its links with both the Democratic and the Republican parties and to fight for the formation of a Labor Party committed to the independent interests of the working class.

This requires struggle within the unions for a programme of demands, including the opening of the books of the oil monopolies to elected trade union committees, that show that the answer to the problems of inflation, shortages and unemployment posed by today's crisis requires a workers' government to carry through the nationalisation of US capital without compensation under workers' management as the basis for a planned, socialist Sao The elections in Bolivia have ended in deadlock and put the whole proposition of "constitutionalising" the country in doubt.

Final results give the UDP coalition of Siles Suazo an overall majority with 35.9% of the vote and 45 seats in parliament.

Siles was closely followed by Victor Paz's right wing A-MNR alliance with .8%-yet Paz gained 59 seats in the congres sional poll.

Ex-dictator Banzer won 13.5% and 24 seats Outside ot the bourgeois parties, the small Partido Socialista of Marcelo Santa Cruz won six seats and 4.07 o: lie national vote Padilla Santa Cruz received the belated support of 'Trotskyists' of the Moreno faction of the 'United' Secretariat of the Fourth International, whilst Vanguardia Obrera Comunista (Workers Communist Vanguard)

led Fileman Escobar took one per cent of the poll and gained a seat in parliament.

electoral stalemate has predictably deepenc the political crisis in Bolivia.

First Paz proclaimed that widespread fraud taker place, Then he and Siles sat down to discuss coalition while the new assembly attempts to 'elect' a president.

The current President, General Padilla, has hinted at a 'run off' between the two MNR mandarins.

Block roads

Meanwhile Siles' peasant supporters have threatened to block roads into La Paz and other major cities, and the COB (Bolivian TUC) has declared a general strike for one day to "pressurize' the electoral court to announce Siles as the victor.

This action has been steadfastly opposed by the pro-Moscow Stalinists whose pathetic manoeuvres within bourgeois parties and alliances have lost them any remaining credibility amongst the working class.

It is quite evident the Bolivian capitalist class cannot manage elections, but equally it is well aware that any other

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