* Index
USA
A16, Washington DC: the battle after Seattle
Rodney Ward / Rick
Wadsworth sionate and caring person, than our departed comrade Joseph Flexer. Socialist Action
4(321)
has lost more than a central leader, more than a brilliant writer, educator and strategist.
A new student movement
Together with the worldwide labour and socialist movements, with his loving family,
Chris Clement 4(322)
and with friends too numerous to count, we have lost a powerful voice.
Joe's son Dani told the Toronto Star that Joe "became a communist and a mechan-
For independent politics ic at about the same time, at about (age) 15". His ideas took him from his native
Solidarity 2(324)
Brooklyn, New York to the Middle East where he joined an Israeli Kibbutz in the
On the presidential elec-
1950s. His principles compelled him to break with Zionism, and to champion the fight for Palestinian self-determination. In the mid-1960s, Joe returned to North America.
tions lived in Winnipeg and briefly in Montreal, and became an important figure in the
Solidarity 36(326)
movement against the war in Vietnam and on the socialist left. Joe settled in Toronto in the early 1970s. He became a provincial organizer for the left-nationalist Waffle movement in the New Democratic Party. I believe that one of his political assignments
Venezuela was to counteract the radical socialist wing of the Waffle in Ontario. Some of its key
Chavez's betrayal elements exhibited the growing influence of Marxist and Trotskyist ideas.
But a funny thing happened to Joe between the meeting hall, the library, and the
Douglas Bravo 19(323)
bar. He became convinced that the Canadian nationalist and left-reformist leaders of the Waffle were wrong, and that the young revolutionaries, fresh from the anti-war, student and feminist movements, were much more his political cup of tea. Always an
Women ardent internationalist, this was no great leap for Joe Flexer.
Maternity leave in danger
He helped to found the Red Circle, a Marxist group within the Waffle. It was in
Document 35(323)
this period that I met Joe. This was the beginning of a thirty year friendship between us, one that matured into a very close political collaboration and comradeship. one that intensified over the past five years. Joe, as a person, was the biggest single political
WTO
The Red Circle helped to found the Revolutionary Marxist Group in 1973. which
The world according to the in turn joined forces with the League for Socialist Action and the GMR. a Quebec
WTO
Trotskyist group, to launch the Revolutionary Workers* League in 1977. The mem-
Pierre Rousset 19 (317-8)
Inside the anti-WTO movement
Harold Lavender 14(319)
34 International Viewpoint #326 December 2000 influence on my life.
archival and publication projects.
The final result of the US presidential election remains uncertain as [V goes to press; we print below excerpts from a statement by the US socialist organization 'Solidarity'.
THE ELECTION OF 2000 has produced a virtual deadlock between the two bourgeois parties—-a probable Electoral College victory for Bush (pending the Florida recounts and lawsuits), a tiny popular vote margin for Gore, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress shrunken to near zero. For the capitalist ruling class of America, of course, "divided government" is no fundamental threat when both parties are firmly right-of-center corporate-dominated organisms, especially when profits are high at home and there is no huge crisis for imperial global management. While there will be plenty of bitter partisan rhetoric-over the size of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the pace and degree of social security privatization, campaign finances etc.—-the bipartisan consensus on the program of corporate neoliberalism at home and abroad will ensure that U.S. politics stay the course set by the ruling class. Should the Democrats or Republicans stray from that program, unelected bodies like the Federal Reserve will impose the necessary discipline to guarantee fiscal austerity and deregulation, and to prevent restoration of social programs. What does unsettle the elites is the prospect of a drawn-out struggle over who actually won the presidential election, resulting in a new administration with gravely weakened legitimacy. The longer the dispute continues, the more time for bigger questions to be raised~-the role of money, of the corporate media, of the rigged "debates" in choking off alternative voices and closing rather than opening up discussion of issues. That is why the system needs to preserve the reputation of "the process" more than the actual result. In a closely divided Congress, for example, it is unlikely that a Bush administration would undertake initiatives, such as banning union campaign contributions or imposing abortion rights restrictions, that would enrage key sectors of an electorate when the next
Congressional elections are only two years away. At the same time, whether Bush or Gore are eventually declared the winner, there will be no meaningful debate on fundamental structural questions.
For Solidarity and other socialists and radical activists in the labor and social movements, the results of this election are a mixed bag. We are proud to have supported a candidate, Ralph Nader of the Green Party, who told the truth--the truth about corporate power and a political system purchased by corporate lobbies, about human rights and workers rights, about the basic causes of environmental degradation. We do not regret in the slightest that Ralph Nader's vote exceeds the slim margins of difference between the bourgeois parties in several states, notably Florida. We congratulate the Green activists and the nearly three million
Nader voters who stood firm in the face of the repulsive scare tactics of "liberal" Democratic party hacks. We are delighted that in a number of states the Nader campaign has solidified ballot status for the Green party. On the other hand, we are of course disappointed that Nader's vote fell considerably short of the 5% national threshold (even though we don't know how much of the vote for him was actually counted). It has never been clearer how urgently needed is a big break from the Democratic Party-a deep, decisive and permanent break that will be seen as serious by those crucial sectors who have been rightly cynical about the whole system but who equally justly feel genuinely threatened in their own lives by right-wing Republican policies. Did the Ralph
Nader/Green 2000 campaign contribute to such a break? Time will tell. For the first time since the mid-1960s, a social movement may be producing a generation of activists prepared to move to independent politics. For us, as socialists and as activists, the struggle continues-the struggle to build both independent polities and most important, the social movements that give those politics energy, momentum and hope. For the bourgeois parties, this election is a dead heat and the result will be more politics of a "dead center. " For those with a pro-working class agenda, especially those with a perspective for abolishing corporate power instead of tinkering with it, the job has just begun. *
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