United States foreign policy has for many years prompted little disagreement between Democrats and Republicans, Now it seems that domestic policy is becoming equally bipartisan. Many Democrats actually voted for Reagan's recent budget cutting social spending by $36 billion, while the rest mounted only token opposition. Will Reissner looks at the changing face of US politics today.
Leading Democrats are falling all over themselves to proclaim the death of the 'old politics' and the need to adapt to the 'message the voters delivered in November'.
But what was that message? It seems almost in poor taste to point out that Reagan received the votes of less than 27 per cent of the eligible electorate; or that the opponent he beat, incumbent President Jimmy Carter, had an approval rate in the polls even lower than Nixon's when the latter was forced to resign in 1974.
What the 1980 election did show was the fundamental agreement by the American capitalist class and its two parties on the need to accelerate the drive against the living standards and social benefits of American workers.
The post-war boom, lasting into the 1960s, had allowed Democratic Party politicians to cultivate an image as 'friends of labour' by promising to extend social welfare programmes and increase living standards. But with the end of the boom, US employers launched a campaign to drive down the living standards of American workers in order to compete more effectively with West European and Japanese capitalists,
This offensive has been backed up in turn by the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and now Reagan administrations. As a result, the disagreements between the two bourgeois parties in the US have narrowed and the framework of their debates has shifted to the right.
Americans shifting to the right?
But this shift to the right of bourgeois politics has not been reflected in the attitudes of the American people, despite the vast media attention showered on such rightist groups as the 'Moral Majority', and organisations opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and to abortion.
The playing up of the Moral Majority says a lot, however, about the ruling class's ideological offensive to turn public debate and public opinion sharply to the right. The offensive stresses anti-communism abroad and anti-Black, anti-welfare, anti-feminist themes at home. The Moral Majority gets such big play precisely because it echoes these very sentiments.
The Moral Majority has been touted as the representative of America's estimated 30 million evangelical Christians. The television preachers who form the group's leadership make extravagant claims about their following and influence, most of which are dutifully and uncritically repeated in the press.
Newsweek, for example, estimated the television audience for Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell's 'Old Time Gospel Hour' at 18 million. Penthouse magazine put the figure at 50 million. But when the Arbitron television rating service actually counted, it found that only 1.6 million people tuned in.
In addition, despite Moral Majority's claims, polls have shown that evangelicals are not generally to the right of the US population as a whole. A majority of born-again Christians support the ERA, which Falwell opposes. A majority support government social programmes, which Falwell says have created a 'generation of bums'. A majority reject his opposition to all abortions.
Evangelical Christians as a group are less racist than the general population, with Blacks making up 28 per cent of all evangelicals compared to 11 per cent of the total population.
A poll taken for Time magazine in mid-May convincingly shows that despite four months of constant repetition of Reagan's reactionary domestic and foreign policy themes, the American public simply does not agree with the President on fundamental questions.
For example, Reagan says that negotiations with the Soviets — whom he describes as liars, cheats, and atheists — serve no purpose. But a solid 65 per cent of those polled favour reopening arms control talks with the USSR.
While Reagan and Secretary of State Haig hoped El Salvador would be the place where the dreaded 'Vietnam Syndrome' — the mass opposition to US military involvement abroad — would finally be laid to rest, two-thirds of the population opposes the decision to send military advisors to El Salvador. And barely 2 per cent favour committing US ground troops there.
Reagan wants to increase military and economic aid to 'authoritarian' anti-communist regimes, and opposes using 'human rights' criteria to determine Washington's military support for a government. But only 23 per cent of those polled favoured 'economic and military support to anti-communist allies even if they violate human rights'.
On social questions the differences with the present administration are just as striking. Reagan wants to make abortion illegal. Barely 10 per cent of the American public agrees with him! The new President opposes passage of The Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. But the ERA has the support of 61 per cent of the people. Reagan wants to end sex education in the public schools. But sex education is supported by 70 per cent of the population.
The increasingly bipartisan domestic policy seen over the past decade and a half does not reflect the attitudes of American working people. Nor does the traditionally bipartisan foreign policy. This explains why since the days of President Eisenhower, who left office in January 1961, not a single President has been able to last out two terms.
But despite the lack of any sharp differences between the candidates during the campaign, Reagan's victory has become the vehicle for a deadly serious campaign by the American ruling class to turn back the gains that workers, oppressed minorities, and women have won in the past two decades.
Reagan's programme
Under sharp attack are women's rights to abortion and the gains Blacks and women have made under affirmative action hiring programmes. Busing programmes to ensure school desegregation are being curtailed. Measures to protect the environment are being gutted. There is talk that Congress may not renew the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed many procedures used to keep Blacks off the voting rolls in Southern States.
Reagan is opening the national parks to the energy, timber, and ranching magnates. He is pressing ahead with nuclear power. Federal aid to state welfare programmes, to medical research and the arts, to urban transit, to housing and railroads, to education, to job training are being slashed.
Plans are underway to strengthen the power of the FBI and CIA to spy on Americans. The Freedom of Information Act, which allows people to obtain government files, is being gutted.
Reagan wants to change income tax rates to provide 'relief' to the rich. He wants to do away with regulations that 'tie the hands' of corporations by making them clean up some of the pollution and destruction they cause.
The new President has gone as far as proposing to slash the Social Security system, which provides the only retirement income for most elderly Americans. Social Security has hitherto been the most sacrosanct government programme of them all.
In terms of foreign policy, Reagan is building upon and accelerating Carter's drive to boost US military strength so that the Pentagon can intervene around the world in defence of imperialist interests. He has proposed spending an almost inconceivable $1.5 trillion on the military over the next five years, while every other area of the budget is cut to the bone.
Symbolic of Reagan's vision is the fact that his budget proposes to spend more on military bands than the entire appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Crisis of leadership
Despite the massive opposition to most of Reagan's budget cuts, despite the overwhelming support for a woman's right to choose abortion and for the Equal Rights Amendment, Reagan's domestic offensive is moving full speed ahead. The missing element that prevents effective opposition is leadership.
Ever since the 1930s, the trade union movement and the traditional Black organisations have been tied to the Democratic Party. Under the impact of the giant labour upsurge during the depression, President Franklin Roosevelt was compelled to enact programmes such as unemployment relief and Social Security, and to sponsor legislation legitimising the new union movement.
This programme of reforms, collectively known as the New Deal, led to a restructuring of the electoral coalition that made up the Democratic Party. The reforms enabled the labour bureaucracy and the political machines of the northern cities to deliver the votes of workers and Blacks, while the Democratic Party retained its traditional pillar of support from the white supremacists of the 'Solid South' (the South remained a totally one-party region until the mid-1960s).
The Second World War and two decades of post-war economic boom, combined with the massive post-war witch-hunt (McCarthyism) that drove radicals out of the union movement, cemented the union bureaucracy's hold over the unions and its allegiance to the Democratic Party.
As long as the economy continued its upward march and profit levels remained high, labour bureaucrats could often deliver higher wages and increased benefits to their members without big struggles against the employers and the government. The bureaucrats were convinced that the key to success was reliance on liberal Democratic 'friends' in government and cooperation with the 'fair employers'.
This attitude was epitomised by George Meany, the longtime head of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, who died in 1980. Meany used to boast that he had never walked a picket-line in his life.
Meany and his ilk were staunch supporters of Democratic Party 'cold war liberalism' — the combination of fierce anti-communism and economic concessions to the labour movement. During the entire Vietnam war, for example, the AFL-CIO bureaucrats were among the most loyal supporters of Washington's criminal policies in South-east Asia.
But today the trade union bureaucrats find that the politicians they help elect are stabbing them in the back and the employers are on a rampage.
In industry after industry, employers are demanding that workers give up previously won raises and benefits. By and large the union leaders have gone along with and helped implement these demands, arguing that they have no choice given the state of the economy.
The United Auto Workers agreed to reopen its contract with Chrysler and cancel wage increases. This was a special concession to Chrysler's impending bankruptcy, but the bosses at General Motors and Ford have told the union that they expect to get similar concessions when the present contract expires. The United Rubber Workers have given up raises. The steel companies have told the United Steel Workers that they want to reopen the existing contract because they cannot afford to pay the negotiated raises. Municipal workers around the country have seen their wages, jobs, and working conditions under savage attack for several years.
Unions in trouble
The present leadership of the unions has brought the labour movement to its weakest point in years. For more than two decades the percentage of workers organised into unions has been declining. It now stands at only 23 per cent of the non-farm workforce — less than the percentage in 1940! Lay-offs and plant closures have led to an absolute decline in membership in the basic industrial unions. Although the bureaucrats are anxious to stem the decline in dues payments, they have been incapable of waging serious organising drives in the largely non-union South or in new plants. Instead they concentrate on mergers with other unions and taking in members in non-related fields.
The Teamsters Union, the country's largest, is a good example of this development. Membership has remained virtually the same over the past decade — 1.8 million. But the number of over-the-road truckers under its contract has dropped from 400,000 to 300,000. And the percentage of truckers organised into the Teamsters is at its lowest point in decades, making the union weaker overall.
These mergers and raiding operations weaken the ability of industrial workers to fight back against the bosses, because they dilute control over union affairs by those workers most concerned and acquainted with conditions in their own industry.
The entire labour bureaucracy is so steeped in the traditions of class collaboration — in politics and union questions — that on a national level there are no fixed, clear-cut right or left wings. The same official may take a good position on one question today, and a rotten reactionary position on another question tomorrow. No section of the present union officialdom has the social and political perspectives needed to effectively and consistently counter the intensifying attacks against working people.
Civil rights groups
The leaders of the traditional civil-rights organisations have also been thrown into crisis by the Democratic Party's inability to deliver significant concessions.
Over the past two decades, Black Democrats have been elected to major offices. Today there are Black mayors of Los Angeles, Washington, Atlanta, Detroit, Newark, Gary and other large cities.
But these mayors are like their white counterparts across the country in drastically cutting back on municipal services and laying off huge numbers of municipal employees. They also carry out the same reactionary 'law and order' campaigns. In a word, Black Democrats act like white Democrats when it comes to administering the capitalist austerity programmes.
The traditional Black leaders have been unable to lead any opposition to the attacks on affirmative action programmes, the curtailment of busing to achieve racial desegregation in the schools, or the racist murders of Blacks in Atlanta, Buffalo, New York, and other cities.
Under the impact of Reagan's proposals to roll back gains in women's rights, the National Organisation for Women (NOW) is growing by leaps and bounds, showing the sentiment for a campaign to fight the attacks.
But in the fight to ratify the ERA, the NOW leadership is locked into a 'no win' strategy which focuses on lobbying legislators in non-ratified states. Despite NOW's lobbying efforts, the ERA has not been passed in a single state since January 1977, even though many unratified states have big Democratic majorities in their legislatures. Unless there are major changes in the class struggle, the ERA seems doomed. To become part of the federal constitution it must be ratified by three more states by June 1982.
Nor have NOW leaders tried to develop a mass campaign in response to the attacks on abortion rights, despite the overwhelming support for legal abortion in all segments of the population.
In one arena NOW leaders have been active. That is around the reinstitution of the draft. But instead of joining forces with opponents of the Pentagon's war drive, they have gone into court demanding that women also be required to register for the draft!
Resistance to Reagan's proposals
Despite the lack of leadership from the traditional organisations of the working class and the oppressed minorities, there have been significant actions against Reagan's policies in the months since he took office. And we can expect more such protests as the effects of Reagan's budget begin to be felt in the fall.
On 15 January, five days before Reagan's inauguration, 100,000 people, mostly Black, staged a march on Washington demanding that Martin Luther King's birthday be made a national holiday. This was the largest Black rights demonstration since 1963.
On 8 and 9 March, the 160,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) staged a two-day national strike, shutting down the country's coal mines to protest administration proposals to cut Black Lung benefits. On 9 March, some 8,000 miners rallied in Washington to press their cause.
On 28 March, about 15,000 people gathered in Harrisburg to protest plans to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The demonstration had the active support of a number of national unions, including the miners.
A month later, on 29 April, some 25,000 rail workers demonstrated in the capital against Reagan's plans to gut funding for rail and transit service.
3 May saw the biggest anti-war demonstration since the height of US involvement in Vietnam. 100,000 people assembled at the Pentagon to protest Reagan's support for the bloody Salvadoran junta. In many respects the marchers' political level, especially their degree of identification with the cause of the Salvadoran rebels, was higher than at any time during the anti-Vietnam war movement, The participation of trade union and church groups in the El Salvador protests throughout the spring was already greater than during the Vietnam war.
For several weeks this spring, literally millions of working people — black and white — wore green ribbons to show their solidarity with the black community of Atlanta, where 28 Black children have been murdered. This huge outpouring of support far surpassed the media-sponsored yellow ribbon campaign for the hostages during the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran.
Despite the lack of leadership in the opposition to Reagan's plans, all signs indicate that Reagan will have a much harder time making his programmes stick than he will in pushing them through Congress.
The reaction to the attempted assassination of Reagan in March showed how much hostility his proposed budget cuts had already engendered. There was little of the shock and horror that had met earlier shootings. In many workplaces news of the attempted assassination was greeted by spontaneous cheering. 'Better luck next time' was a common expression when news reports indicated that the President would survive. A joke made the rounds that attempted assassin Hinckley should be hung... for missing.
'Vietnam Syndrome' lives on
Like Carter, Ford, and Nixon before him, Reagan is trying hard to restore Washington's political capacity to use its military might against revolutionary struggles around the world. But the biggest obstacle to this is the deep-seated opposition of US workers to military intervention abroad since Vietnam.
Initially the US rulers hoped that the seizure of the Tehran embassy and the hostage issue would do the trick. But that did not happen.
The imperialist propaganda campaign around the taking of the hostages did significantly undercut the sympathy most US workers initially felt towards the Iranian revolution. But it did not reverse the deep-going opposition to military involvement. In fact, the debacle of the 'hostage rescue mission' in April 1980 further deepened opposition to foreign adventures.
The Reagan administration also hoped that El Salvador could be used to whip up sentiment for foreign involvement. But that has been a complete bust!
For nearly three months, Alexander Haig was on television and in the newspapers every day, warning that El Salvador was part of a Soviet 'hit list' for the Americas, and that the struggle had been fomented by 'Soviet proxies' in Cuba and Nicaragua. But that shrill media blitz was counterproductive. The more Haig yelled, the more nervous people became. Every time he opened his mouth, people saw the spectre of troops heading down the path to another Vietnam.
The State Department eventually recognised that the El Salvador campaign had backfired. On 12 March it held a background briefing for reporters, at which a high-ranking, unidentified official said that the US media was 'exaggerating' the situation in El Salvador. 'This story', the State Department official claimed, 'has been running five times as big as it is, and we figure if we talked to you about it, you might not make this thing such a big deal.'
The briefing had an instantaneous effect. El Salvador disappeared from the news overnight. But it remains in the consciousness of the population, as shown by the wave of local protests in March and April and the size of the 3 May Pentagon action.
Attempts to whip up hostility to other so-called Soviet 'proxies', like Libya and Syria, have also fallen flat.
The administration has had somewhat more success in arguing for higher arms spending based on the fictitious need to 'catch up with the Russians'. But this acceptance of higher military budgets is built on the most tenuous foundations, and could collapse like a house of cards as the impact of the cuts in social spending and the real scope of the contemplated Pentagon build-up become felt.
In fact, a Louis Harris poll taken in early May showed that only 1 per cent of the American population feels that 'standing up to the Russians throughout the world' is the most important issue facing the United States.
Labour party
As it becomes clearer to the union bureaucrats that they are getting little return on the millions of dollars and huge amounts of personnel they pour into Democratic election campaigns, some have begun raising the idea of forming a labour party.
Tony Mazzocchi, an official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and a candidate for the union's presidency, has made support for a labour party a major theme in his election campaign. For over a year he has been speaking on the need for a labour party at union meetings throughout the country.
The April issue of the Machinist, the organ of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, featured a long article on the role that Canadian members of the IAM played in organising Canada's labour party, the New Democratic Party. The editors noted that 'since the 1980 elections, a swell of sentiment has been surfacing around the country to establish a third political party'.
Other trade union figures have also raised the idea of building a labour party, But at this stage no union bureaucrats are contemplating any real moves in that direction. Rather they raise the threat as a pressure tactic within the Democratic Party.
Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the significance of the fact that for the first time since the 1940s the idea of a labour party is being raised by elected officials of some of the country's largest unions. When Mazzocchi calls for a labour party, that makes it easier for its supporters to gain a hearing among the union ranks.
The discussions around this question are just beginning. But the inability of the Democrats to deliver for the workers provides growing opportunities to wage an educational campaign for a labour party within the union movement.
The growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party can also be seen in the recent organising efforts of the National Black Independent Political Party.
Fight back
So far only one major union has resisted the 'give back' drive of the employers — the United Mine Workers of America. The militant coal miners have been a constant thorn in the side of the employers and government. In 1977-78, the miners waged a 111-day strike against the bosses, defying Carter's back-to-work court orders in the process. That's 111 days without any benefits, since the UMWA has never had a strike fund.
When contract negotiations opened this year, the coal bosses came in with a whole shopping list of 'give back' demands. They were trying to get the miners to conform to the pattern that had been established in other industries. They then hoped to use the concessions wrested from the miners to further step up the drive in other industries.
The UMWA leadership is not fundamentally different from any of the other bureaucracies running the major unions. If the coal bosses had been able to deal simply with the national leadership of the UMWA, they would have been successful in their take-back drive.
But the miners, through a virtual revolution in their union in the 1960s and early 1970s, had won the right to vote on their contracts. This victory raised the political consciousness and self-confidence of the ranks.
And the ranks of the miner's union fought back against the demands of the bosses. When they heard some of the more outrageous demands of the coal companies, they staged wildcat strikes throughout the coal fields even before the old contract expired. These wildcats, plus the two-day national strike against the cuts in Black Lung benefits, convinced the employers to withdraw their main take-back demands.
Then, when the UMWA leadership negotiated a contract that still contained significant give-backs and measures that would weaken the union, the ranks overwhelmingly voted the pact down, knowing they would again be in for a long strike without any strike benefits.
Through their hard-fought 72-day strike, the miners got another contract offer which they accepted by a two-to-one margin on 6 June. The new pact eliminated almost all of the original provisions that would have weakened the union and [illegible] ability of its members to determine working conditions in the mines.
In the coal fields the ranks have shown that when the members of a union have the right to determine its policies, and when they are mobilised to fight, they can stop the bosses' offensive. In this sense the miners are an example to all of American labour, and a harbinger of developments in other unions in the years to come.
Although the miners are still far out in front of the rest of the labour movement, the offensive of the government and employers and the growing mood of militancy in the ranks is forcing other bureaucrats to begin to consider 'non-traditional' methods of struggle. The example of the rail-workers demonstration in Washington, the union participation in the anti-nuclear and El Salvador movements, union support for the ERA, and the discussion around the need for a labour party are all encouraging signs of the stirring in the ranks of major unions.
Due to the success of the cutback drive in Congress, Reagan and the ruling class are intoxicated with success at present. But they mistake the acquiescence of the Democratic politicians for support for the cuts among working people in general. As the cuts begin to be fully felt, however, Reagan and Wall Street will find out where the American workers really stand.
Postscript
Since this article on the first six months of Reagan's administration was completed in early July there has been the first major test of strength between Reagan and the labour movement — the air traffic controllers' strike.
It is clear that the administration aimed to use the relative isolation of the controllers from the mainstream of the labour movement to smash their union organisation and set an example to the whole of the labour movement,
As we went to press support from rank and file workers for the dispute was growing — solidarity with the controllers was scheduled to be a major theme of Labour Day marches and of the massive 19 September Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington. But the unions are refusing to instruct their members not to cross the traffic controllers' picket lines.
Nor is there any sign of the Reagan administration backing down despite the obvious shambles to which the air traffic system has been reduced by the dispute. Whatever the final outcome of the dispute the severity of Reagan's response has caused a big re-thinking inside the working class particularly in the ranks of the air traffic controllers themselves. (Ironically the controllers' union had backed Reagan in last year's presidential election).
The stakes of the coming confrontations have been [illegible] and chanting 'strike' at mass meeting graphically revealed.