In this US presidential election year, we are focussing on the efforts of our friends in the Socialist party USA to make some inroads into the pseudo-democracy of the country’s rock-solid two party system. Below, we give space to SPUSA presidential candidate David McReynolds to give his thoughts on the whys and why-nots of running a campaign in the face of media indifference, systematic hostility and plain old lack of funds.

So, David, why are you running for President?
I had been asked during the last year or two if I was considering running ‘ever again’ (and at 69 ‘ever again’ has a limited shelf life). I said no. I’d done it once. I was glad I’d done it, it was certainly a real honour, but a Presidential campaign, even for a small party which will be lucky to be on the ballot in 15 states, is a drain not only on the candidate but on many others who work at least as hard on petitioning, fund raising, arranging speaking dates, and so on.
However a ‘Draft McReynolds’ committee was formed, without consent, much less my knowledge, sometime in May and on June 9th several of the younger members of the Socialist Party asked me to join them for dinner at one of the inexpensive Indian Restaurants on East 6th Street, here in Manhattan, at which time they handed me a letter signed by a number of SP members and, more important to me, people who were not in the SP, urging me to run for President on the Socialist Party ticket.
I said it would take me a while to think the matter through. I finally said I would let them know on August 1, which I did, and an announcement went out to the Socialist Party’s list shortly after that saying that while I could not in conscience be drafted (having refused that honour during the Korean War, I could hardly submit to it now), I would volunteer to run.
My reasons for seeking the nomination are both political and, in a narrower sense, organisational. In the political sense, I believe the tradition of democratic socialism has been largely ignored in this country. Too many people think ‘the Left’ is represented by Workers World, the International Socialist Organization, the Socialist Workers Party, or the Communist Party. I mean no disrespect to those groups, which hold their beliefs sincerely (and fiercely), but the traditions of a radical but peaceful approach to social change, a tradition which champions both social justice for all, with respect for the political and religious rights of all, must be revived. And that is the great tradition of the Socialist Party, of Eugene Victor Debs, Norman Thomas and Frank Zeidler. Our numbers are indeed few. But the ideas for which we struggle are ideas which have animated humanity from the dawn of civilisation - freedom, decency, fairness, peace, justice. And we know, having learned at great cost, that these ideas, which seem so simple they should be shared by all, can in fact, be carried into reality only by great and prolonged struggle.
Also I am stunned so many on the broader left were captured by Bill and Hillary Clinton, so much so that even on the Balkan War, which was so clearly a violation of the United Nations Charter, many felt they had to support Clinton. (And some, alas, felt they had to support Belgrade and overlook the horrendous violations of human rights in Kosova ordered by Milosevic.)
We hear talk from both Republicans and Democrats about the need to cut the federal budget - but no one is willing to aim a spear at that sacred cow, the military budget. We are not even ashamed - or aware of - the fact our nation is now the largest seller of ‘conventional weapons’ in the marketplace of the world. Weapons destined for oppression in lands as distant as Indonesia. We hardly seem aware that our nuclear weapons programme continues at full tilt, as if the Cold War had never ended.
There is silence on the fact we have now become a ‘Gulag nation,’ with the largest numbers of men and women in prison of any nation on earth - and that these prisons are being turned into an industry - prison labour is now competing with free labour. There is no outrage at the vast number of young African American males who have lost their voting rights because of felony convictions and approach the job market with this impossible strike against them.
We are concerned only about making sure the middle class has decent medical care. What about the poor? What happened to that compassion for the poor which once marked our political life? Where is a voice raised on their behalf? For the immigrants whose wages are so low and living conditions so poor?
Where is our concern for providing decent housing at low rent for the millions in sub-standard housing?
There is no hint in the major parties that capitalism is the main reason for our foreign interventions and the incredible string of human rights violations these interventions have triggered.
We seem to think we can tackle the environmental problems without dealing with the profit motives that to a great extent have generated those problems.
We talk about a low minimum wage when we might better talk about a ‘maximum wage’ - such that no CEO in the nation could earn more than, let’s say, four times the lowest paid worker in the country.
We have waged a war on ‘drugs’ which has created a federal agency with a vested interest in continuing the supply of drugs - we have chosen prison rather than education or rehabilitation or simply, in the case of most drugs, decriminalisation.
We have spent decades discussing the issues of race without understanding that the issue of racism is linked to class and we must lift employment opportunities at decent wages so that those on the bottom rung have a chance to get out of the terrible ‘lock’ of a permanent underclass. More even - that they have a chance to take an active part in the political life the nation.
We have finally come to accept women’s rights as a valid issue but we are not yet clear that on the issue of abortion a woman must have a genuine right of free choice - either to have an abortion or to have a child with medical and financial help. We have made great progress on the issues of gay and lesbian liberation - progress, which as a homosexual who ‘came out’ in 1969, I can measure with amazement. But it is a battle that is not yet won.
We have hundreds of billions for the military but we have failed to see that we must rebuild our national network of railroads as one part of shifting away from an economy based far too heavily on fossil-fuels. We have cities, such as Los Angeles, where the public transit is so poor that ‘cars have won the battle’, meaning the elderly are trapped in their homes.
The Socialist Party represents to me a concern about these and many other issues. It represents, of course, the drive to achieve the social ownership and democratic control of major corporations, the rights of workers to take direct part in the decisions in their plants.
But it also represents compassion of a very different order than that of George Bush Jr., whose ‘conservative compassion’ is that of the Corporate State, determined to maintain rule by a tiny elite. The Socialist Party represents a compassion which seeks to liberate those who rule us from that burden, which seeks to free not only the nonviolent offenders now in prison, but those men and women who, as their guards, are no less trapped.
I have been deeply impressed by the growth of the membership in the Socialist Party, primarily among young people, so that it is now at the highest point in some years. I’d like to use the campaign to build both the ideas of the Socialist Party and its framework so that both in elections and through education, demonstrations, mass actions, etc., the ideals of Debs are given a new life for our time, when politics has been haunted and shadowed by furtive men funded by great wealth. And that we can oppose the major parties with a ‘politics of radical compassion’. And that we can help create new ideas and make sure they have a home in the market place of the nation. Yes, in a sense, I say ‘demand the impossible’.
I wish it did not need to be said, because it is so obvious - we cannot win the election, nor carry even one state. The ballot laws are rigged against minor parites, and the Socialist Party has no corporate donors (small surprise) and very few millionaires (if any) among its members. But if any fear we might possibly take votes from ‘the lesser of two evils’ I would counter that so many today refuse to vote, the disgust with the political whore house is so deep, that the votes we get will come from the young, from those who had given up hope, from those who would not have wasted their time. I want to build a new sense among Americans that politics do count, that just as the massive civil disobedience campaigns of the Civil Rights movement, of the Vietnam peace movement, of the Act Up movement - movements in which I took part and in the course of which I was arrested more than once - all helped create political changes. Electoral politics is not disconnected from those actions, but is another weapon in the hands of the American people.

David McReynolds’ running mate is Mary Cal Hollis, who was SPUSA candidate for President in 1996, a campaign which helped to reverse a long decline in SP membership. She was recently interviewed by the Colorado Daily, which gave her a sympathetic hearing. Asked whether socialism wasn’t ‘dead’, she argued that, on the contrary, because a socialist government would be one that ‘supports people instead of supporting profits, socialism is it was more relevant now than ever, where we’ve gotten to the ultra-capitalism stage where corporate greed rules and decisions are not made to benefit people.’ In arguing for the need for socialism in America, Hollis cited the fact that ‘one out of 100 American children is sleeping on the street. Since welfare reform, women and children are put homeless on the streets. The jobs that have been shipped away, it’s a desperate situation. Workfare is hiring people, really, at slave wages -- $2 an hour sometimes. There are really some desperate things going on in our country, and people are tired enough that they’ve given up on fighting back. One basic thing that goes on is that we’re intentionally divided. The media talks a lot about black vs. white, Jewish, Hispanic, low income, working mothers and teenage welfare mothers, and all of these people should realise that they are workers and they have a lot in common and they need to organise. ...about 90 percent of Americans would gain from a socialist government.’