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A call to internationalism and science:
At the first debate, every single one of the eight candidates for U.$. president seeking the Democratic nomination in 2008 opposed the Supreme Court decision restricting so-called "partial birth abortion."(1) The trouble is that when we turned to read the so-called revolutionary press inside U.$. borders, we found the exact same political line.
One party secretly led by the most regressive, clandestine war-mongering elements of the imperialist regime prioritized the issue by making it the front page story.(2) Yet when we read the stories, yes the stories say in one sentence we need revolution, but there is no link to an analysis of the path to revolution created by the partial birth abortion issue. The article goes further and as a matter of consistent practice over years links all global opponents of abortion as Hitler followers, which would of course include Stalin for a period of some years during World War II.
Another party stressed that the answer is in the streets,(3) which is a good activist answer, but again there is no real connection between the issue and why it's a revolutionary path forward and not just an issue monopolized by disciplinary elements of imperialism. It's hard to see why we need a party following Marx and Lenin if marching in the streets is all we need to know.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party figured out the disciplinary value of the abortion issue a long time ago. It is one of three or four lifestyle issues that the major parties uses consistently to bind people to them emotionally. Outside the united $tates, it is hard for people to see why abortion and gun control are always the top issues in U.$. pseudo-politics. The imperialists' analysis of this is correct and that is why they use the abortion issue to divide their supporters into those who are religious and those who support shopping "choice," the cornerstone of secular Liberal ideas.
Had the Democrats been a party opposing imperialist war, we could support their abortion maneuver and the Republicans' mirror opposite of it. Instead, as even former Senator Gravel pointed out, his major competitors are not on record opposing "nuking" other countries. The fact is that Biden, Clinton and Edwards voted for the Iraq War, and Obama is voting for funding "for the troops," when what needs to be done is stop voting for more money for the Iraq War. The abortion issue as spoken by Democrats at a time of war against the Mideast has a different war-mongering interpretation than it would when handled by proletarian leaders.
When every single Democratic Party candidate supports an issue, our Marxist scientists have an obligation to point something out. There needs to be an analysis, because people drop out of politics from frustration. It's not just what we want in politics, but "how do we get it" that is even more important in the long run.
There also needs to be leadership. When a party claims Lenin, that party is claiming to be vanguard leadership. So we need to ask, why we need you as a leader as opposed to some liberal Democrat or even a non-liberal Democrat.
The U.$. abortion issue is not even a snow shovel to use to get out of our driveways buried in a blizzard's snow. It has no political value taken at face-value, because of how imperialism has dominated the issue.
With the major imperialist parties using abortion to rally people to their sides, MIM has issued a slogan to reunite any oppressed or exploited people who may be confused by the imperialist parties: sterilize all men!
If all men are sterilized, there can be no abortions needed, thereby satisfying pro-life oppressed people. If all men are sterilized, there will be no burden placed on wimmin for medical procedures to begin with, and so the pro-choice people should be satisfied.
It is the abortion issue that better than any other reveals that the so-called revolutionary parties in the united $tates are weak and lacking scientific leadership. These parties witness imperialism stress the abortion issue to the sky and line up their supporters this way, decade after decade, and not one of them objects. That's why MIM's central task is not just to "create public opinion," but to "create public opinion and the INDEPENDENT institutions of the oppressed." The other parties are fronting for the Democrats, and the Democratic Party's underlying exploiter support.
The underlying reason that these other parties have created a bee-line for the Democratic Party (even while not always admitting it) is that their class analysis is wrong. We are not out to mobilize 51% of Amerikans for anything right now. It cannot be done in a proletarian way. We do not have any need for parties that cannot point to a path forward, unless our tasks are bourgeois.
Those who have reached an analysis that the question is theocracy versus secular life should admit it. Then they can abandon Marx and Lenin. For a long time, MIM has been unable to find any reason that the Communist Party USA is not a section of the "Democratic Socialists USA," a lobby group inside the Democratic Party. We can say the same of anyone else who cannot see analytically that the abortion issue as discussed by Amerikkkans 99.44% of the time is about building loyalty to imperialist political institutions.
Only between-the-lines, we could read the Spartacist League saying that the abortion issue is a Democratic Party builder. Their suggestion of how to demarcate is to stress the lack of funding for abortions in the government budgets--a social democratic issue, and one that even Giuliani has shown a willingness to co-opt. The Trotskyists of the Spartacist League said,
"The first major post-Roe attack on abortion rights took place under 'born-again' Democrat Jimmy Carter, who in 1977 sneered, 'There are many things in life that are not fair,' as he signed into law the Hyde Amendment that eliminated abortion coverage from the Medicaid health plans of 23 million poor women. The Democratic administration of Bill Clinton carried out a relentless campaign against poor and black women that went virtually unopposed by feminists as long as abortion remained formally legal. In 1996, as part of his campaign to 'end welfare as we know it,' Clinton signed the 'Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,' which slashed benefits for women and children and was a recipe for starvation and death for the most vulnerable members of society."(4)There is no way to turn the welfare state into a revolutionary issue, because the money for it comes from super-exploitation of the Third World, but our organizations inside U.$. borders have been so sapped of revolutionary will, that few have a revolutionary analysis, let alone revolutionary activism. In any case, there are plenty of activists and politicians inside the Democratic Party who will stand with the Spartacist League for more welfare state funding. In Europe, the most liberal of the Democrats are called "social democrats."
The "Socialist Workers Party" may be the organization that has written most often on the topic, with 27 articles on "partial birth abortion." The May 7 2007 issue contains an article quoting Barack Obama favorably on the question, as if to prove MIM's point.
We found no stance from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization or the Progressive Labor Party as of April 28. After extensive searching when this article was almost done, we found one organization pointing out the obvious:
"Democratic Party candidates, on the other hand, have voiced opposition to the ruling and are seeking once again to use the issue as a means of convincing workers and young people to back the Democrats in 2008."(5)The World Socialist Web Site officially working for the Trotskyist Fourth International pointed out that Democrats did not block Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, and hence the partial-birth ruling. This was actually the most independent statement we found from the left-wing of parasitism.
There are other issues that the imperialist parties use as their "wedge issues." Gay marriage is an issue MIM can support directly without complication, because most Democratic Party candidates still do not support it. On the question of gun control, again we do not make this a front page issue to build support for the Republicans or Democrats and we tend to stress that there is some point to the anti- gun analysis, but the Republicans are the ones upholding the Bill of Rights on the question. Lately, a hot button issue is migrant worker rights, but again the parties are split on that with the top leaders of both parties taking a more bourgeois internationalist line and the labor aristocracy followers in both parties taking a more chauvinist line. Neither imperialist party is going to take a line to open the borders, because of the inherent contradictions in the imperialist-labor aristocracy alliance ruling. Of all the "wedge" issues, in practice, abortion is the one where a supposedly revolutionary press is most likely to serve as direct disciplinarians for the Democratic Party, with all the consequences for lying and fudging their way through the most significant questions of imperialist war.
For our part, we need to offer a revolutionary analysis for the way out. Those wedded to the Democratic Party need to see that it was not even their lobby groups that turned the tide in 2006 elections against Bush. The real force at work was the Arab people resisting in Iraq: that is what made Bush and Cheney unpopular. It was the armed struggle of the Iraqi people that did more than anything else for the abortion issue in the united $tates by changing the political climate. The Arab people showed concretely that Bush and Cheney were wildly unrealistic. What imperialist candidates win and on what platform comes from an overall class struggle. The decisive parts of that political struggle do not even come from inside the abortion issue itself. Everything from the Congress to Supreme Court to the president depends on politics, a struggle that determines the nature of these people. It will always be the victories of the international proletariat that do the most to drag U.$. politics forward.
The abortion issue is not moving in the same direction globally. In Mexico City, the government legalized abortion in the first 12 weeks(6) at exactly the same time the United $tates was going backward in its usual way. South Africa legalized in 1996; Spain is moving forward on both abortion and gay rights.(7)
In fact, led by a pro-life president, the united $tates is attacking countries with the most restrictive abortion laws--a little noticed fact among Republican Party activists thanks to the stupidity of the left-wing of parasitism. U.$. troops are operating in Iran and kidnapping hundreds of Iranians including diplomats, but Iran's abortion law allows abortion only for threats to the mother's life. The Taliban stand on abortion--the National Organization of Women (NOW) still has not taken down its web page supporting war against Afghanistan because of its stand on abortion.(8) Amerikkkans are so obsessed with imperialist institutions that even among supposed "Marxist" and "Marxist-Leninist" organizations only MIM has pointed out the international aspects that are principal in the abortion issue. Only MIM is making internationalism principal, even in the abortion issue. That's why it is only MIM pointing out the pro-life stance of Iran and Afghanistan to Republicans while calling for an end to the wars there.
Notes:
1. http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/281772943.html
2. Front page issue of "Revolution," April 29, 2007 ("Revolutionary Communist Party")
3. "Overturn the anti-abortion ruling," www.workers.org, April 26 2007 ("Workers World Party")
4. http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/866/abortion.html
5. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/dems-a21.shtml
6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6590809.stm
7. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161176,00.html
8. http://www.now.org/press/07-06/07-26.html ; www.wikipedia.org has details on the international
status of abortion