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From Socialist Worker, No. 95, 2 November 1968, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
At a George Wallace rally in Pittsburgh 10,000 followers chanted: ‘Who needs niggers?’
The chant reveals the feelings of the tens of millions afflicted by this plague.
Southern whites of all classes. Workers throughout the US but mainly in the mid-West and border states of the South. Middle-class and rural supporters everywhere.
Wallace’s American Independent Party is smashing that hallowed institution of US society, the two-party system.
Through the two-party system, the US ruling class found the means for satisfactorily organising the vast spectrum of its diverse interests. Each of the parties consists of numerous local and state parties controlled by the leading business, land and professional interests of the area.
These are welded together in national structures dominated by giant corporations and banks. The two parties are in business competing for control of another business, the government of the United States, of the various states cities and counties.
This patch-work structure in turn rests upon the comparative social peace and ‘prosperity’ of US society since the Second World War. But this prosperity is itself a product of a permanent crisis, the permanent war, cold and hot, and the arms economy.
The illusory democracy of American liberalism rests increasingly upon a growing state, police, military and bureaucratic apparatus. The two can co-exist only so long as the genuine crisis can be held off.
But the crisis is forestalled only by the extension of the state apparatus. Either way the days of liberalism are numbered.
Each day real conditions grow worse. The cities are an insult to human life.
There is inflation. Threats of unemployment held off only by the war. Working conditions become more miserable.
The general insecurity becomes unbearable. Unbearable, it mounts to hysteria. And the hysterical watch ‘long-haired protestors’ ‘attacking’ police. (A recent poll shows 60 per cent of Americans supporting Mayor Daley’s use of the cops in Chicago.)
They walk the streets in fear of angry unemployed youth – mainly black.
They see the US more and more isolated in a hostile world. Nearly defeated in Asia by a tiny nation.
The world seems to turn upside down and they search for a way out.
The liberals, the official representatives of the US ruling class have hinted at the way.
The liberals, after all, created the cold-war fever. It was under President Harry Truman that the infamous list of ‘subversive organisations’ was set up.
Humphrey, even in the ‘good old days’, was always a vehement cold-warrior; a designer of the Bill establishing detention camps for ‘ subversives’ in case of ‘national emergency’.
The liberals, in their boundless generosity, do not blame black people for the unbearable conditions which they are made to suffer. But the real problem for the liberals is not the racist conditions but that black people struggle against them.
The liberals like to think that black people are not so bad, that is, that they are passive. But ‘rioters’ are very bad.
Black militants are troublemakers who ‘cause’ unrest. If only there were no struggle ... the rulers could get down to solving the problems.
The liberals have always made stability the watchword of the day. They invented the ‘law and order’ cloak for racism.
In bourgeois society, the people can do nothing. They may only choose the rulers who do everything for them.
The rulers need stability to solve the problems, say the liberals. And the ‘people’ must logically conclude that now we need a ruler to bring stability. A George Wallace.
He promises to use the repressive machinery which the liberals have already assembled, just as he feeds off the racist and reactionary sentiments planted by the liberals.
Nixon and Humphrey are also for ‘law and order’. Wallace, even with his Dr. Strangelove running mate LeMay, is no more ‘hawkish’ on Vietnam than his rivals.
Whether he wins or not, the trend will be towards the policies which Wallace demands although ultimately a Wallace will be needed to carry them out.
These policies are focused today upon black people and anti-war protestors. But the general crisis of US society demands general solutions – demands that all US workers accept worsening conditions in defence of the military and economic might of US capital.
Wallace is still in a position from which he can be ‘irresponsible’ in viewing labour unrest, that is, not come out against it. The question is how soon US workers will come to realise that Wallace is one of their enemies.
The trade union bureaucracy’s support for Humphrey is very largely responsible for the workers’ turn towards Wallace who, if nothing else, promises ‘change’. Wallace’s success shows the complete disgust of millions with the old parties.
It shows the need for a complete and unequivocal break with them as the first step towards building a movement to fight for a real solution to the problems of US black people suffering in the extreme the problems faced by all US workers, for jobs, housing and education.
A movement is needed to link this struggle to the fight against the Vietnam war which makes these policies even more unattainable. The Peace and Freedom Party, which has taken this first step, helps point the way for the ‘real politics’ needed by the US left.
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Last updated on 30 October 2020