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Though I was physically unable to join Charles Brown and the Detroit contingent to the MWM, I watched the several hours that C-span provided. If Charles took the bus, he'll be on the road till sometime this evening. Ten thousand participants can be objectively disappointing if one uses numbers criteria to judge success. But what if we use message content to judge success? The speakers I raptly watched used terms like "capitalism" and "socialism." These kinds of terms are very rare in movement public discourse. One speaker pronounced "we need a labor party." It made me think, "Well, we already have a Labor Party, but it's moribund."
I further thought that, as intended by the MWM organizers, this demo may be an important opening salvo in the most current phase of class struggle. After C-span shifted from MWM to coverage of Bush-Kerry, I looked over the program demands of some recent political action groups that are worker based. About 1994-5, Labor Party organizers began assembling a remarkable package of 'Economic Justice' demands that, if enacted, would bring capital to heel and enhance the working class. This class-based, economic program was then fully adopted by Ralph Nader (with the help of LP head Tony Mazzocchi) and inserted in the Green Party platform at its 2000 Denver convention. Prior to this, class was only lightly touched on in Green politics.
I also reviewed programmatic material from U.S. Labor Against the War and found that class was deeply imbedded therein, but it embodied more of an international dimension than did the Labor Party 10 years ago. Then I remembered USLAW's national conference on 10/24/03 in Chicago where I heard Clarence Thomas report on his just-returned visit from Iraq (post-'Mission Accomplished') where a small USLAW delegation met with Iraqi labor leaders. Thomas' report clearly was about class struggle. Many earlier activists/leaders of the Labor Party were part of this meeting.
Then I reviewed the "Million Worker March List of Demands" and found it to be an update of and complement to the Labor Party program, adding important elements re. the environment (thanks to the Greens), democracy, civil liberties (thanks perhaps to the ACLU, NAACP, etc), etc. MWM demands were domestic, and didn't include solidarity with workers abroad, for whatever reason. Nevertheless, I see MWM demands as emerging out of lists of demands put together by other class-struggle-based, but slightly divergent, sets of unionized workers and worker-supportive organizations (not NGOs). There is a rapid evolution of programmatic synthesis of the importance of class. This is emerging from left logic and human necessity, and being expressed in various documentary forms.
But the MWM expressed an element of that logic and necessity that is critically necessary, and relatively unique these days: the leadership of those who represent the most oppressed and exploited. The 60s taught many the importance of such a principle, but it was not followed very scrupulously by progressives in the following decades. We may finally have enough knowledge and fortitude to put the race-class package together coherently. Yoshie mentioned that Theresa El-Amin had told of Black trade unionists converging on D. C. early on to network and plan, especially on the South. That reminded me of the year 1997 when Theresa and I seemed to be on the same side of a volatile race-class debate being held on the old Labor Party email discussion list (some on LBO were on the old LP list). Racism, etc was being charged. In practice, however, I believe the best of the old Labor Party was expressed in locations where minority rank and file (in or out of unions) guided the action in principled ways.
Bob Mast
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