First Published: Unity, Vol. 4, No. 17, October 23-November 5, 1981.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The coming New York elections are extremely important. It is even more important that the left and progressives generally understand what is at stake in this election and in a host of other elections.
In New York City, supposedly a bastion of democracy and support for civil liberties, Mayor Koch has shown how shallow a bastion of democracy anyplace is under capitalism. Koch, nominally a “liberal,” has dealt in out-and-out racism since he got in office. Since Reagan got elected, Koch has gotten openly insulting to Blacks, Latins and Asians, attacking them verbally and programatically.
Frank Barbaro, the candidate who has the most chance of defeating Koch, could be termed a radical Democrat. He outspokenly opposes Koch’s racism and sellout to the real estate interests in New York. He is certainly not a socialist, but he represents an alternative. And what is most important, he is a ready focus for the anti-Koch, anti-Reagan, anti-rightist attitudes that exist among a majority of people in the metropolitan area.
Barbaro’s candidacy provides a ready opportunity to raise opposition to the deadly conservatism that Reagan’s election has consolidated in the U.S. The left must get more actively involved with raising concrete opposition to the growing right-wing trend, and not just philosophical opposition.
The left can no longer be content to raise abstract opposition, rather than practical opposition, particularly in electoral politics. We should not be content to condemn various elections as bourgeois politics. Rather, we should take Lenin’s dictum that, at times, especially when the revolutionary surge is at a low ebb, it is absolutely necessary to get into the middle of bourgeois politics and slug it out with the bourgeoisie, raising revolutionary questions even in a counterrevolutionary context. It is in this spirit that we support Frank Barbaro’s candidacy and urge progressive people in New York to vote for him.
There are other such elections, and UNITY will keep closer tabs on them as well. Bourgeois democracy must be utilized to fight for reforms that weaken the bourgeoisie. We cannot sit back and sneer at “political freedom” that does exist under bourgeois democracy and simply watch the U.S. bourgeoisie, in desperation, eliminate it. It is difficult to organize people to overthrow monopoly capitalism under the conditions of bourgeois democracy. It would be unbelievably more difficult under the brutal repression and absolute censorship of fascism.