by the conscious decision of its leadership, has put no pressure on Kerry to oppose the war.
In the overwhelming "Anybody But Bush" climate prevailing on the liberal and even radical left, everything is secondary to getting out the vote for Kerry.
The demonstration being planned to protest the Republican National Convention at the end of August marched under the rather wimpish banner "The World Says No to the Bush Agenda" - without explicit mention of the war or any other issue, although the whole world knows that the war is the number-one reason we're all marching.
The second Polit is slightly more subtle. U.S. ruling elites are sharply divided over the "unilateralist" and "pre-emptive war" doctrines What would
Kerry have of the neocons and certainly the done? What outcome in will he do if demonstrates the elected? Who absurdity of the
knows? neoconservatives theory of dominance in its raw form.
But they united on a fundamental proposition: The United States should and must rule the planet. That is the only way to bring stability and prosperity to a fragile world system.
The dissenters from neoshare that assumption; they believe in the necessity of persuasion over sheer firepower to achieve the same basic goal.
The reality, however, is that U.S. political-military dominance, and the freemarket-run-amok economic regime that accompanies it, make a combination that is violently and dangerously destabilizing.
In the name of free trade they bring about a world of growing inequality, destruction of whole national economies and unpreceNew York anti-war protestors: what would Kerry do? dented environmental catastrophe.
Yes, and they produce terrorism as well: The barbarism of U.S.-ruled global capital produced what Gilbert Achcar calls counterbarbarism, what Rahul Mahajan describes as "a cure that is worth than the disease," what I call religioustotalitarian fanaticism.
This threat cannot be defeated by the methods of wars between states, no matter how many countries are wiped out in "the war on
Where does this leave us? If the U.S. ruling class remains committed-as it does-to dominating the world, then there is a certain NEED for an ideology that is quasi-religious, flies in the face of reality and proposes to overcome real-world obstacles through a combination of teleology (history /God is our side") and brute force. That is where the neocon ideology, bankrupt though has proven to be, plays a role and continues to exert powerful influence only the Republican right but also among its purported Democratic detractors.
How much more damage it will do to the world and to its own U.S. society remains to be seen.
This depends only in part on the outcome of the November election; of much more importance is the remobilization of the mass U.S. and international antiwar SHOVCHCHE • David Finkel is an editor of Against the Current, the magazine sponsored by the U.S. socialist organization Soli-darity (www.solidarityus.org). This article is based in part on a presentation at the recent Solidarity Summer School. "The Democratic Party's campaign of dirty tricks to keep independent lett candidates Rainh Nader and Peter Camejo off the presidential ballot constitutes the most serious threat to voting rights in the US since the death of Jim Crow.
*The rationale of many liberals who support the Democratic Party's presidential candidate John Kerry, such as filmmaker Michael Moore and Global Exchange founder Media Benjamin, is that he will pull back from US President George Bush's all-out assault on civil rights.
The reality is that Kerry's attempt to exclude Nader from the ballot is, like Bush's Patriot Act, which Kerry voted for and still supports, a dangerous infringement of democracy." (Todd Cretin, fulltimer for Nader/Camejo campaign in California.) Patrick Scott Well before the George W. Bush started campaigning for re-election, well before the various Democratic contenders for the 2004 Presidential election were fighting it out in the primaries, key sections of the US left - or more precisely those that like to pass themselves off as leftwere already campaigning against any form of left challenge to the Democrat /Republican duopoly in 2004.
Their principal target was against any repetition of Ralph Nader's 2000 Presidential campaign - so that the Democratic contender would have a clear run for the White House.
The Nation and Mother Jones magazines, two long established radical publications both publicly urged Nader not to stand again in 2004. To his credit he chose to ignore the numerous appeals emanating from the left liberal intelligentsia and announced his independent candidacy for the Presidency.
Nader stood as the US Green Party Presidential candidate in 2000. Today though, sections of the Green Party itself have become infected with the same mood of pessimism and defeatism as much of the rest of the left.
The recent Green Party convention rejected an endorsement of Ralph Nader's independent candidacy and chose lexas lawyer David Cobb as their candidate.
Cobb though has made it clear that he will not campaign to get on the ballot in marginal states but only in states where John Anti-Bush protestors march through New York at the start of the
Republican Convention Kerry is likely to win by a large margin. In other words the Green Party has become a conduit for channelling the left vote into the Democratic Party.
Pat LaMarche, David Cobb's Vice Presidential candidate has even gone so far as to argue that she would vote against herself and David Cobb in favour of John Kerry in the event of a closely fought election battle for the Presidency in her home state.
It is also significant that Nader has chosen Green Party member Peter Camejo as his Vice Presidential candidate. Camejo clearly stands on the left of the Green Party and was previously the Presidential candidate for the US Socialist Workers Party in 1976.
On the key issues the Nader/Camejo slate may not have a socialist alternative, their platform though is way to the left of both Bush and Kerry, and way to the left of anything that Tony Blair and New Labour in Britain are saying or doing.
On Palestine (where there is more or less complete bi partisanship between Bush and Kerry) Nader has consistently called for an end to US military and financial aid to israel.
On Iraq, the central issue Nader supports the complete withdrawal of US troops and corporations. Nader though supports a UN peacekeeping force as an alternative and clearly has illusions in the 'neutrality' of the UN.
Nevertheless his position is well to the left of John Kerry who very recently reiterated that he port of the environment, also in support of labour and trade union rights, womens, and lesbian and gay rights.
Whoever wins the presidential election in November, it will still be necessary to carry on fighting for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. It will be necessary to fight against the continued offensive from the religious right for a woman's right to abortion and against a constitutional ban on lesbian and gay marriages.
In the early years of the 21st Century whole sections of the US left appear to have learnt very little from the experiences of the 20th Century and before.
What those experiences show is that the concessions or reforms that were granted by the US ruling class were only granted under the pressure of organised mass movements -from the mass industrial struggles of the 30s, the black civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, through to the womens' movement and the movement against the Vietnam war.
Today many of the social and political gains achieved under the impact of these movements have been rolled back.
The key reason for this is the failure to build any form of mass political organisation based on the working class and oppressed that is independent of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Much of Nader's platform is inadequate and some of it is just plain wrong. However in 2004 as in 2000 his Presidential campaign can help form the basis for a new political organisation independent of the Democratic and Republican parties, one that is long overdue.
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Mahdi army fights to
defend Najaf (right) while British troops dig
in in Basra