Pre-election

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As President Carterfaced by record post-war inflation running at 18% per year-embarks •a Thatcher-style programme of recessionary policies, there are signs of considerable unease within the American capitalist class.

The big capitalists of course are not going to suffer unduly as a result of Carter's credit squeeze, his increases petrol taxes or his swingeing $13 billion cuts in Federal spending.

The burden of these measures will fall first and hardest on smaller and weaker businesses, and the cuts will bite with particular savagery on the most oppressed layers of society -the young, the old, the sick and the unemployed.

Spending cuts

Carter's spending cuts seem likely to hit the budgets of state legislatives, big cities and depressed areas, along with a cutback on food-stamp benefits and pensions for former federal employees.

They will also include postponement of the welfare reform programme; the axing of 20,000 Federal jobs; and cutbacks in postal deliveries, the job-training programme and child health assistance.

Meanwhile US interest rates continue to run at a staggering 18%, with bankers declaring that the combination of credit squeeze and the monetary policies taken by the Federal Reserve Board mean effectively "no money at any price"

A full-scale recession, bringing mass unemployment. and a real fall in production, now seems-after a number of false starts-to be on the way in the US, in election year.

Timing

Indeed the timing of these moves by Carter underline the Seriously. Patt... where are the brakeson this thing?

oTreFed® scale of the crisis faced by US capitalism yet it is unlikely that any 'of his opponents will attempt to exploit these for political advantage.

One of Carter's main worries in presenting his draconian package of cutbacks was that he sounded too much like . a Republican.

Less government

• Republican front-runner Ronald Reagan places Federal spending cuts at the centre of his Thatcher-style electoral campaign for less taxes, less restrictions on private enterprise, and "less government"

Reagan's "less government" however would preside over the deployment and possible use of vastly expanded military arsenal: he proposes a major increase in "defence" spending.

In this he is of course at one with fellow Republicans George Bush (former CIA director) and supposed "liberal" John Anderson.

While Reagan and Bush stress the need to counter the military power of the Soviet Union, Anderson focusses much of his chauvinist agitation against the anti-imperialist struggles" in the Middle East, claiming that:

"The threat to the security of our oil supplies stems from internal political strife in the Persian Gulf"

Hard to outbid

But the Republican leaders are all finding it hard to outbid Carter's aggressive cold war stance towards the Soviet Union and extravagant military programme -which included the riotously expensive and ecologically destructive MXmissile system.

Indeed on every aspect of foreign and domestic policy Carter is at present able to fend off his reactionary critics by simply pointing to the fact that he is already implementing a Dead ahead. policy almost as right wing they are seeking.

While this stance seems to have held Carter's support among the proportion of the US electorate that participate in the primaries and in the Presidential elections it seems to cut far less ice with the massive numbers of workers, unemployed and radicalised younger people who continue to abstain from the choice between a Republican Tweedledum and a Democrat Tweedledee.

The renewed bi-partisan war drive by American capitalism is still in its infancy: yet already tens of thousnads of youth; minorities and students have taken to the streets and RECESSION ... *.04 Carter Carter's measures to prepare for campuses in protest against a reimposition of conscription.

Memories of the horrors of the Vietnam war have not been erased by jingoist speeches from Republican and Democrat hawks.

Anti-draft

Even in the US labour officialdom two leading AFL-CIO bureaucrats recently voted against the draft-a political stand that was notably absent during the early stages of the Vietnam war.

It is with an uneasy weather eye on the potential opposition from such elements that Senator ©MacNelly—Richmond News Leader Edward Kennedy is gamely pressing ahead with his almost certainly doomed campaign for the Democratic nomination.

'Liberal' face Kennedy has sought to channel the opposition to Carter's economic policies, opposition to the draft, and misgivings about an all-out cold face.

On this platform his class collaborationist appeal swiftly enlisted the support of 15 major trade unions-including Chrysler director Douglas Fraser of the United Auto Workers.

But at the same time Kennedy has spelt out his reactionary panacea for runaway inflation: compulsory wage and price controls.

AFL-CIO leaders have for some time called on Carter to impose such a policy: but it is far from likely that working class voters would flock out in their thousands to endorse it at the polls.

Meanwhile Kennedy's opportunism and diehard imperialist stance were also demonstrated by his exploitation of Carter's supposed "softness" on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation-which helped win him the massive Jewish vote to swing the New York primary.

Kennedy clearly offers

alternative whatever for the American working class.

But nor does he seem likely to offer US capitalists a serious hope of enlisting working class support or acquiescence to the kind of savage imperialist policies and domestic austerity programme they hope to impose in order to preserve their rotten and crisis-ridden system.

Chicago strike

One demonstration of the dubious hold of the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party over the labour bureaucracy and its rank and file has been the tenacious three-week strike by Chicago firemen against Democrat Mayor Jane Byrne.

The firemen, taking a lead against the cuts, struck demanding a union contract-and stayed firm in defiance of a back-to-work injunction by the courts, fines on their union and a fivemonth jail sentence on local Fire Fighters Association President Frank Muscare.

An organised scabbing operation failed miserably, while local trade unionists rallied increasingly behind the strike. Oliphant @ 1980 Washington Star Kennedy The leadership of Chicago's substantial black community lent their public support to the strike-and Byrne's strikebreakers were forced to climb down.

It was no coincidence that in the course of these events Kennedy was loudly booed as he marched alongside Byrne in a St. Patrick's day parade through Chicago-and was immediately afterwards trounced 2-1 by Carter in the Chicago primary.

American workers have only one real choice-to reject both Carter and Kennedy.

The task in the next period is to take up the fight in every union local and workers' organisation for a break from the reactionary and discredited politics of the twin bourgeois parties, and for the building of a Labour Party based on the trade unions.Only such a party-within which revolutionaries would organise and fight for a programme of democratic and transitional demands to secure workers' independent interestsoffers a way out of the bipartisan agreement on a future of' austerity, anti-communism and imperialist war.

Reconstruct the Fourth Internotional !

No.l Mav. 1979 DISCUSSION BULLETIN 600 THE TRANSITIONAL - PROGRAMME IN TODAY'S CLASS Founding document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee Available, price 75p including postage from WSL, BM BOX 5277 LONDON WCIV 6XX

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Wednesday April 2 1980

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war, into a Presidential cam- paign with a fraudulent 'liberal'