Interview in Socialist Action with Jeff Mackler

Socialist Action's Twelfth National Convention, July 14-16, voted to launch a campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in California. The delegates voted to run Socialist Action National Secretary Jeff Mackler against Democrat Dianne Feinstein, Republican Richard Mountjoy, and Green Party candidate Todd Chretien.

Mackler, 66, is a veteran fighter against U.S. imperialist war and intervention. He has been an activist from the time of the U.S.-backed invasion of revolutionary Cuba, in 1961, when he headed a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

During the Vietnam War, he served on the National Committee of the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC). In conjunction with the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people and the mass opposition to the war inside the U.S. military, NPAC was a major component of the broad antiwar movement that forced the U.S. out of Vietnam, a historic setback to American imperial war aims.
In the 1980s, Mackler was a founder and central organizer of the Northern California-based Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, a united-front coalition that consistently mobilized tens of thousands against U.S. intervention in Central America during the period of the Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and Grenadian revolutions. Mackler visited Grenada and Nicaragua during that time to meet with leaders of these revolutionary struggles, including Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
In 1991, during the first Gulf War, when the U.S. slaughtered a quarter of a million Iraqis in a matter of weeks, Mackler worked to initiate two national antiwar conferences and chaired the Jan. 26 San Francisco antiwar protest of over 200,000. Similarly, in 2003, with the bombing and invasion of Iraq, Mackler worked to help initiate and co-chaired the San Francisco protest rally of close to 300,000.

"War and intervention, overt and covert, are fundamental to U.S. policy," said Mackler in a July interview with us. "Yesterday it was Vietnam, Cuba, Congo, Central America, Chile, Somalia, Iran, and Iraq. Today, the U.S. war machine focuses on Iraq again and the Middle East in general—aiding, abetting, and financing the Zionist slaughter in Palestine and Lebanon and making threats against Iran—while occupying Afghanistan and threatening intervention in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia."

"War is an inherent part of capitalism," Mackler explained, "and the ultimate solution to the internal contradictions of the profit-driven and competition-driven system. The U.S. military-industrial complex is organized and designed to maximize profit rates for the corporate few and to serve the imperial economic and political interests of the war-making class—regardless of the capitalist party in power.

“Socialists acknowledge our fundamental obligation to challenge the U.S. war-makers and their twin parties and to defend the rights and struggles of all those who resist imperialist domination and oppression.”

The worldwide crisis of capitalism

"All of the evils of capitalism that the vast majority have come to abhor," Mackler continued, "from racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, and deterioration of social services and public education to abrogation of basic civil liberties and the dismemberment of the historic gains of working people on the job are necessary for capitalism's existence.”

Today the capitalist system is in a crisis, with each of the major industrialized nations and their competing regional trading blocs geared up as never before to win the mad race for declining markets and resources at the expense of the world's working masses. At a time when the technology and resources exist to build an environmentally sound world of plenty for everyone, the system is becoming unglued. Union pensions and health-care plans, as well as jobs that were taken for granted for decades, are eliminated by means of fake bankruptcy filings by the corporations.
Whole continents stand in ruin, with a third of the world living on less than $2 per day. Tens of thousands die of starvation daily in nations whose resources are looted by the U.S. and other neo-colonial exploiter nations.

Dianne Feinstein’s sordid record
Mackler's central opponent in the U.S. Senate race is Dianne Feinstein. "Feinstein, said Mackler, "is the classic California liberal Democrat. Her rap sheet is designed to demonstrate her ‘progressive’ record. She gets good marks from the AFL-CIO, the National Abortion Rights Action League, Peace Action (formerly Sane/ Freeze) and from other liberal groups whose political orientation is to Democratic Party lesser-evilism.

"And yet Feinstein has supported every U.S. war conducted by every administration since she entered the Senate in 1992" Mackler pointed out. "Today, she leads the bipartisan congressional chorus cheering on Israel’s bombing and occupation of Lebanon and its renewed occupation, subjugation, and starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

"My opponent supported the fake ‘drug war’ in Colombia, in reality a move to refurbish and instruct the Colombian government's army and death squads as they seek to crush the national liberation struggle in that country. Feinstein supported the allocation of billions for the so-called National Missile Defense System and nearly every other boondoggle to transfer working people's money to the military.”

“Feinstein, at $50 million in net worth,” Mackler asserted, “is the fifth richest person in Congress, yet she voted to eliminate the Estate Tax, a measure that was designed to make the rich even richer.

“Feinstein voted for one of the most draconian pieces of anti-civil-liberties legislation ever, the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which President Clinton signed into law. This law, which will send hundreds, if not thousands more, to the nation's execution chambers, essentially scrapped critical due process rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.”

”Hardly a superstar on civil liberties," Mackler continued, “Feinstein sought to scrap the First Amendment's free-speech provisions by supporting a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. In the name of ‘fighting terrorism,’ she joined the congressional stampede to enact and renew the reactionary Patriot Act, and more recently backed legislation to increase government spy agencies’ ‘rights’ to tap cell phones.”

“My opponent is an ardent defender of the predatory capitalist system and its two-party shell game," said Mackler. “Her voting record and public statements, liberal or conservative, right or 'left,' are subordinate to this determining reality.”

“Reforming capitalism,” Mackler pointed out, “that is, efforts to transform it to a 'kindler and gentler' system of exploitation and minority rule by electing the least offensive of the millionaire and billionaire candidates the ruling rich periodically offer us during the election season, is both a utopian fantasy and a fundamental impediment to principled working-class politics.”

”Socialists fight for all progressive reforms, to be sure,” said Mackler. “We actively participate in and support all who fight for a better world on every front. Whenever working people independently organize to advance their own interests—in mass mobilizations in the streets, in trade-union struggles, on picket lines, and at public meetings and rallies—we are part of the struggle. But we have no illusions in the nature of the beast.

In the capitalist electoral arena there are no real choices. While socialists participate in elections to advance their political critique of the capitalist system and to build the mass movements that inevitably arise to challenge many of the evils generated by the system, we reject any support—directly or indirectly—to the candidates and parties of the rich. We don't play the ‘lesser evil’ game.”

Todd Chretien’s “Perfect Storm”

"Green Party politics," Mackler noted, "including it's current California expression in Todd Chretien’s U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat Feinstein, is simply the latest version of lesser-evil politics."

Mackler then quoted from a Nov. 19, 2005, article by Chretien, who is also a public spokesperson for the International Socialist organization (ISO).

Chretien had written: “The Senate race, with its diminished spoiler issue because of the huge lead pro-war Dianne Feinstein will have over her pro-war Republican opponent, likely to be more than 20%, opens the door for a larger vote for a pro-peace candidate than ever before."
Todd Chretien’s “Perfect Storm” article, said Mackler, “was centered on the proposition that superhawk Feinstein has a supposedly insurmountable lead of 20-plus percentage points over the virtually unknown and semi-retired Republican Party candidate Richard Mountjoy, a faithful ‘slot filler’ in a race that has been virtually conceded.

“Chretien’s conclusion? It's safe for even 10 percent or a ‘million people’ to vote for him and the Greens in 2006 without significantly harming Feinstein’s re-election chances.”

According to Mackler, Chretien then offered some “practical” advice to his Green supporters by stating: "Of course, if a close race develops for governor [in which Green Party candidate Peter Camejo opposes Arnold Schwrzenegger], many progressives may choose to split their ballot by voting against Arnold and for the Democrat, but voting for the Green Party against Feinstein."

Green Party politics are based on middle-class reformism, the notion that the capitalist parties, especially the Democrats, can generally pressured to do the right thing. In the 2004 elections Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb essentially told his supporters to "Vote Democrat"—that is, John Kerry—in all states where the polls indicated that the race was close.

In most states the Green Party practices a version of “inside/outside” or lesser-evil politics, wherein their candidates run in “safe districts” but step down in races where conservative Republicans face so-called liberal Democrats. “It is a sad day,” said Mackler, when socialists, like Chretien and the ISO, fall into the same ‘lesser-evil’ trap.”

A campaign for social justice

Jeff Mackler's U.S. Senate campaign is aimed at providing a serious political alternative to the twin U.S. parties of war, racism, poverty, and environmental catastrophe. "The Democrats and Republicans, no matter who their candidates or what their campaign promises," said Mackler, "are nothing less than the direct representatives of capital, of the ruling rich, who require death and destruction to protect their interests."

Socialist Action's campaign is aimed at today's new fighters against injustice, at the youth who have learned from experience that their prospects are bleak in the capitalist framework. It is aimed at working people who want to revitalize and democratize the trade-union movement and expand union power to the 90 percent who are without unions. It is aimed at fostering the construction of a class-struggle left wing in the unions, a militant fightback current that will seek to organize the majority to fight in the political and economic arenas to challenge the boss's parties on every front.

The Socialist Action campaign is directed to the immigrant workers of every nationality and their families, who courageously demonstrated on May Day that real power lies in the streets, in independent organization, and in solidarity—the prerequisite to reversing the boss's drive for cheap and defenseless immigrant labor and the deepened exploitation of the working class in general.

Our socialist campaign is aimed at the Black and Latino masses, who are always the first victims of any downturn, "the last hired and the first fired," at the dispossessed and shunned Katrina victims, and the victims of school re-segregation and calculated decay in public education and the gutting of bilingual education.

It is a campaign for women who fight for the right to abortion and equality, and for gays and lesbians who seek to exercise the democratic right to marriage—in short, for all people who desire a new world where human needs come first and capitalist exploitation and oppression are relegated to the insane oddities of history.

“We will challenge all who seek social and economic justice to unite in mass actions and democratic coalitions against all U.S. wars and against every attack on working people,” said Mackler. ”Only working people, including their allies among the oppressed everywhere, have the power to reverse the present descent to barbarism and to build a new world.”

In 1999 Jeff Mackler was co-coordinator of the first major national conference on the Cuban Revolution. Sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley and attended by 2000 people, including 30 Cubans who were specialists in as many fields, the Dialogue with Cuba Conference provided a format for the Cuban people to demonstrate the superiority of a state system based on workers and farmers that had abolished the profit system and private property in the means of production.

“The groundbreaking gains of the Cuban Revolution in health care, education, and human solidarity,” said Mackler, “are a model for the entire world.”

Mackler plans to devote a significant portion of his campaign to defending Cuba against the constant threats by the U.S. to invade. “Our campaign condemns the illegal and barbaric U.S. embargo of Cuba. We stand in solidarity with the Cuban Five, the heroic Cuban patriots illegally jailed by the U.S., who demonstrated for all to see that the real source of terrorism in the world today is the government of the United States.”

The Socialist Action 2006 Campaign will champion the fight for freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the world's most well-known victim of the racist frame-up operation that passes for the U.S. criminal “justice” system. Mackler will also campaign for Lynne Stewart, the New York progressive attorney who was convicted on "conspiracy" charges in a frame-up trial that ran roughshod over Stewart's basic constitution and democratic rights.

Mackler has been co-coordinator of the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal for the past 10 years. He also serves as the West Coast coordinator of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.

The Socialist Action campaign will fight for the political independence of all progressive social movements. It will challenge the myth that the Democrats, the graveyard of all social movements, are a lesser evil to the Republicans. To the reformist credo, "Anybody But Bush," we answer, "No to the twin parties of war and oppression!" and "Yes to the independent organization and mobilization of working people!"

Join the 2006 Socialist Action California Campaign! Call: (415) 255-1080, or e-mail: macklerforsenate@yahoo.com.