25¢ WfJRlllRS '.II".R'~X.523 No. 561 16 October 1992 Bush, Clinton, Perot-Callitalist Shell Game \ Elections '92: The Politics 01 Misery At a whistle stop in western Michigan, the imperial president of the United States sighted a man in the crowd dressed in a chicken suit carrying a sign saying, "George Bush was in the loop." Bush shouted at him: "Let this chicken here tell what's wrong with America. I'll tell you what's great about it." You don't need a chicken to tell you what's wrong with America. The rich have become filthy rich, the working class has become poorer, and the poor have become homeless. - All along the campaign trail, reporters encounter pain, desperation and a grim view of the future. "I don't see a future," said a young worker at a Springfield, Ohio truck and diesel engine plant. "I work seven days a week, and I still can't save any money. I got two kids, a wife and a house payment. I don't know what's going to happen with my kids." It's not just the Midwest rust belt that's suffering. A professional photographer in L.A. exclaimed, "everybody I know is hurting. I've been laid off from my last two jobs." The Clinton candidacy is benefiting from the imrniser­ ation of American working people, even though he hasn't made the slightest pretense of economic populism. Quite the contrary. The Democratic convention in New York last July turned its back on the party's traditional core constituencies-organized labor and blacks-in order to appeal to white suburbanite yuppies. (For the first time, the majority of the U.S. population lives in suburbs, and two-thirds of suburban whites live in communities AP which are less than 1 percent black.) Disdaining the usual Thousands line up for jobs In a Chicago hotel last January as decaying American capitalism is mired continued on page 14 In recession. Imperialism Starves. Africa Thousands of people. are dying of as an inevitable consequence of drought hunger every day in Somalia. The strife­ and war. But the mass starvation is not torn northeast African country, initially due to an "act of god." The countries of a Soviet client, switched sides to become sub-Saharan Africa are deprived of the a client of Washington in the late '70s most elementary provisions for times of and then back to Moscow in the late'80s. shortage and crop failure: food and cur­ With the end of the Cold War it is no rency reserves, reservoirs and irrigation. one's client. Tens of thousands have been Ordered by the IMF (International Mon­ killed by marauding bands, hundreds of etary Fund) to grow export crops instead thousands driven from their lands to of food in order to payoff the usurious become homeless refugees. Drought, debt, cut off by the banks and multi­ famine, civil war and banditry lay waste nationals from new investment, their to the land, where human existence was populations have been driven down into precarious in the best of times. This is desperate misery. The underlying cause the hidden face of the imperialist "New of African famine is the brutal exploita­ World Order." And it reflects the agony tion of the continent by imperialism, of an entire continent, where colonialism which in its ruthless drive for profit is has been replaced by neocolonialism, and thrusting the African peoples into pov­ for the masses life continues to spiral erty which is below the minimum level downward to pure hell. for human existence. CII~~~~~ A famine of unprec- The food reliefsent to Africa by the 'It; edented proportions is capitalist leaders has been pitiful com­ Q) ravaging Africa. The pared to the need. By UN estimates, it will take well over half a million tons turyworst hasdrought hit southernin a cen- of food to provide for Somalia alone over iiiil Africa and the eastern eastern Horn of Africa where communal where the fundamentalist regime is wag­ the next year. Yet only 30,000 tons of part of the continent warfare has devastated crops, curtailed ing a jihad (holy war) to impose Islamic food monthly are being received from up to Kenya, causing trade and interrupted shipments of food rule on the black peoples of the south, donor nations-and other sub-Saharan massive crop failure relief. In Somalia, engulfed by all-sided the situation is possibly even more crit­ countries are being largely neglected. l and destruction of live­ dan conflict, 1.5 million people-more ical as the government continues to Bush flamboyantly announced in mid­ stock. Hardest hit by than a quarter of the population-are in block relief aid to the region. August that the U.S. was airlifting o the famine is the north- danger of starving to death. In the Sudan, The capitalist media treat the famine continued on page 6 California, the Cutback State No to Prop 165! Fresh on the heels of his $11 billion hatchet job on the state budget, seriously crippling education, health and welfare for the.working class, California Repub­ lican governor Pete Wilson is pushing deadly Proposition 165 on the November 3 ballot. In the guise of welfare and bud­ get "reform," this viciously vindictive proposal blames the poor for their own poverty. Cynical "experts" rant about "helping" the poor end their welfare "dependency"...by phasing out welfare. Right-wing politicians evoke vile racist Students at Cal State Long Beach protest myths about black women living high tuition hikes. State Democratic leader Willie on the hog by making babies, and out­ Brown (above, left) and Republican governor of-state "welfare bums" flocking to Cal­ Pete Wilson agree on new budget slashing ifornia to get on the "gravy train." billions from education, health and welfare. The governor and his cohorts literally want to starve black women and chil­ The measure would begin by amend­ cial backers of the measure is Safeway, This is now reverberating down to the dren, drive thousands into homelessness ing the state constitution to declare that which has been trying to break the Team­ county and city levels in the form and deny life-or-death medical care to "public assistance is not a fundamental sters union and would like people to of layoffs, pay freezes, etc. While the the sick and elderly. The Spartacist right" but rather a "disincentive" to "seek employment" at poverty wages. Democratic-dominated State Assembly League says: Proposition 165 is racist "seeking employment." Instead the So at a time when the official unem­ under Speaker Willie Brown put up a murder, pure and simple, and it must be emphasis is to be on "self-sufficiency" ployment rate in California has been mock battle for two months, it was merely defeated, if not at the polls in November and "family." In other words: homeless, nudging 10 percent, Prop 165 would over the details of where the weight of then on the streets by the mobilization jobless, hungry, sick or disabled-you're slash the maximum welfare grant by 10 the cuts would fall. Both sides had a of the labor movement. on your own. Among the biggest finan- percent, and another 15 percent if a fam­ bipartisan nod of agreement that big busi­ ily continued to receive Aid to Families ness would not be touched, that the work­ with Dependent Children (AFDC) for six ing class had to sacrifice. According to months-totaling a 25 percent cut. This Democratic kingpin Brown, "the state means, for instance, that a mother with can no longer afford to pump money" Lenin Against two children would immediately see her into local governments, so "the battle in Great Russian Chauvinism pitiful grant go from $663 a month to the Capitol has largely been fought over .$597, and then in six months it would how much each would be cut" (San Fran­ In Yeltsin's Russia today we are witnessing drop again, to $507. cisco Examiner, 30 August). the obscene spectacle of Stalinists fostering In addition Prop 165 would deny an For the Democrats, 'the "magic of Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism increase in the AFDC grant for a new democracy" is the "art of compromise" while carrying red flags. This is the legacy baby if it was conceived while the -meaning everything is for sale. But of the nationalist dogma of "socialism in mother was on welfare, and repeal all Reaganite Republican Wilson insisted he one country." It is flatly counterposed to special cash aid to pregnant women, would not sign the budget unless educa­ the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky which including the $70 "pregnancy supple­ tion suffered the heaviest hit. So the created the multinational Soviet workers ment." And it would mandate limits on Democrats' "opposition" eventually col­ TROTSKY state. As thefollowing statement to the Eighth LENIN county General Assistance/Relief pro­ lapsed and made the deal. In the after­ Party Congress in 1919 underscores, Lenin grams, the last-resort aid received math the Democrats are trying to claim waged uncompromising struggle against any and all manifestations of Great Russian largely by single males, and even allow they won some "concessions" to ease the chauvinism toward the national minorities which had suffered oppression under the , a county to repeal such aid. GA dates pain of the cuts. One gets the feeling tsarist yoke. back to 1931, during the Great Depres­ that if the Republicans proposed a bill The Soviet Republic, which has been established in the country where tsarism sion. Already Alameda County, which to send all Jews to concentration camps, formerly oppressed Finland, must declare that it respects the right of nations to includes Berkeley and Oakland, has in­ the Democrats would propose to com­ independence.