In this last week of the campaign, we who fight against the Bush administration, the horror that we know, fight also to turn away from a reactionary past and begin to work directly for a civilized future. I say civilized rather than socialist or even progressive, because that is where this administration, with its preventive war and disastrous occupation in Iraq, its craven stooging for Halliburton and every other big corporation, its war against labor, the environment, social security and seniors, has led us.

There have been other crucial elections in U.S. history. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson, 'liberal' slaveholder that he was, defeated a Federalist government that had enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts and, with Alexander Hamilton waiting in the wings, might have moved toward war and dictatorship. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, representing the anti-slavery reformist Republican party, won against forces that would have either completely appeased the bullying slave holders or tolerated their secession. In 1940, as the Swastika flew over all of Europe, Franklin Roosevelt prevailed over liberal Republican Wendell Willkie, whose party nevertheless was filled with isolationists who might have prevented any Republican, no matter how liberal, from providing aid to England and later the Soviet Union against the Nazis.

Today, John Kerry and the Democrats face an administration that proclaimed Iraq, Iran and North Korea an 'Axis of Evil' and has already invaded and occupied Iraq. Will it, if it is returned to power, launch a war against Iran, where the evidence of the Iranian government’s involvement with terrorist groups and possession of 'weapons of mass destruction' is much more real than the nonsense Bush insulted and continues to insult our intelligence with about Iraq? The fact that Iran has a much more powerful military than Iraq had and the clerical nature of its regime in a region with a Shiite Muslim majority in Iraq and significant Shiite minorities in Syria and Lebanon, would deter even 'sane' imperialists. But who can say honestly that it will deter this administration?

There has been an armed truce on the Korean peninsula since 1953. North Korea also borders China, a fact ignored contemptuously by General Douglas MacArthur when he marched to the Korean-Chinese border, the Yalu River, at the end of 1950. Chinese military forces intervened, drove US and South Korean forces out of North Korea, and MacArthur was contemplating air and possible nuclear attacks against China when Harry Truman removed him from command. Even though China is now a significant nuclear power, who can say that this administration, continuing its 'victory march' for 'freedom' would not get into a second Korean war and escalate that war into a war with China, which of course would be a nuclear World War III.

Given what Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld et al have said and what they have already done, these are only two possible scenarios. They may not be probable at this moment but who doubts that they will be very possible if Bush returns to office?

The domestic policy effects of Bush’s consolidation of power should be clear to all non-Bush supporters. More of the same in its anti-labor, anti-environment policies. 'Partial privatization' of social security and a very strong chance of a draft. A third 'energy crisis' which is literally beginning now with the huge increase in crude oil prices and super profits for the administration’s most important backers, the energy monopolies, the military industrial complex firms that produce the weapons that destroy countries, and firms like Halliburton which get the contracts to 'reconstruct' them. To paraphrase John Kennedy, as important as domestic policy is, foreign policy is more important than domestic policy because foreign policy can kill you.

Anyone who says today, whether they are Ralph Nader or various sectarian left parties on the ballot that there is no difference between Kerry and Bush in this election, goes beyond Lenin’s famous definition of infantile leftism in 'Left-wing Communism:An Infantile Disorder.' They can be more properly called 'fetal leftists,' or in the case of the sectarians who have attacked those who have written, campaigned and fought on the necessity of supporting Kerry against Bush 'stem cell leftists.' At least infants have seen the outside world even if they can only scream at it when it doesn’t give them immediate gratification.

Let us all make election day a work day and work as hard as we can to get everyone we can to the polls to defeat the Bush administration and all Republicans running for office. To paraphrase the last line of the Communist Manifesto: 'we have nothing to lose but an administration which calls the chains of exploitation and oppression freedom: we have a country and a world to save and win.'

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.



» Find more of the online edition.