RESPONSE - Hillson
G Scott Aikens (aikens@Free-Net.Mpls-StPaul.MN.US)
Mon, 24 Oct 1994 11:32:23 -0600
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS IN MINNESOTA GUBERNATORIAL E-MAIL DEBATE, from Jon
Hillson, Socialist Workers Party candidate
1. There is a moral breakdown in society, under the pressure of the
collapse of the market system. What is revealed, however, is the essential
nature of that system, dog-eat-dog competition, unchecked greed, and the
antithesis of human solidarity. The inner workings of the lifestyles of
the rich and famous, consistent for centuries, are reveal as if for the
first time, stunning people. Corruption appears rampant. In truth, the
drive for profit requires increased exploitation of labor, and therefore
exerts massive pressure on the working class family. Cutbacks of
entitlements ensure the transfer of billions of dollars to war spending,
interest payments to banks, agribusiness credits--the enrichment of US
capital to fortify it against foreign rivals. These economic dynamics rip
the liberal facade from the face of capitalism; the twin big business
parties shift to the right; liberalism and its social engineering framework
begets ultrarightist scapegoating (Limbaugh, North, Buchanan, Quist, et al)
in an effort to deepen divisions among working people to bloc united,
anti-capitalist, pro-labor, pro-farmer resistance, and make the majority
bear the burden of the calamitous price of disintegrating capitalism. This
is the march towards war at home and abroad against working people, be they
Caterpillar strikers, young people, and others in the United States, or
Cuba revolutionaries, Haitian farmers or ordinary Iraqi citizens. I
believe in the traditional values of class struggle, of an injury to one is
an injury to all, of solidarity; such beliefs take on rich concreteness
when people fight to defend our rights, creating a climate of trust,
integrity and loyalty among millions of people determined to lift ourselves
from the dirt, blood and cynicism of capitalism.
2. Mass struggle to place human needs before corporate profit through union
organizing, defense of working farmers, the fight for a shorter work week
with no cut in pay, union-scale minimum wage, adequate retirement, free,
universal health care and other entitlements--thus forcing a radical
restructuring of tax system to with steeply graduated tax on the wealthy,
the corporations, and polluters, removing taxation from backs of working
class, farmers and small business and eliminating indirect taxation,
including lottery, sales tax, and other regressive forms of legal usury.
3. No capitalist candidate favors "less government." Democrats and
Republicans in reality demand more sacrifices, slashing social wage,
benefits and entitlements to working people while lining their pockets with
free medical care (the congressional plan, for itself), increased salaries,
and revolving door to corporate suites. They believe government should
punish, hammer and discipline working people to accept less; their war on
crime is a war on working people; their differences are only in tempo,
speed and depth of attacks on our class, our families and our rights. Less
government is a demagogic banner aimed to divide working class on basis of
race, sex and nationality, pitting us against each other for scraps. I
favor the replacement of the capitalist government with one based on the
immense majority of workers, farmers, youth and the victims of the profit
system; such a government can only emerge through massive, popular
revolutionary struggle, which will be generated by the conditions of the
collapsing old world order, from Wall Street to Moscow, from Paris to
London, on every continent. Millions of youth, working people and others
will arise, seemingly from nowhere, to enlist in the armies of fighters who
will forge leadership instruments to sweep aside the decay of the current
system and emancipate humanity from its wreckage. The ideas and practice of
my campaign, its supporters, including young socialists who back it, are
open to any worker, youth or activist who wants to prepare for this
historic and inevitable showdown. Reach us at our campaign headquarters,
2490 University Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105 or call (612)690-3041.