But the fact that the White House basement apparatus could have been created in spite of all the Congressional “reforms” instituted after the Watergate affair and designed to prevent just such things as occurred in Iran/Contragate proves conclusively, if proof were still needed, that only a powerful, organized popular movement can really stand in the way of the Fascist menace. An important lesson is that it would be disastrous to rely on the moderates within the Establishment to preserve democratic rights or to prevent this country from plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust, although differences within the Establishment should be fully exploited. And this applies to the Liberals as well, bearing in mind how quickly they fell into line at the beginning of the Cold War, their craven conduct in the era of McCarthyism, their early support of the Vietnam War, their treacherous conduct in the Civil Rights movement. The truth is that the moderates and Cold War liberals operate with the same fundamental premises as the ultra-Right and have helped to create the political climate of the Cold War, of racism and jingoism, of the ideology of Big Business, which the ultra-Right has exploited and with which it has gained power.
The relentless attack on the Constitution by the Reagan Administration and the ultra-Right challenges progressives to define their own attitude to that document. Need we concern ourselves with something that in its creation countenanced slavery and ensured the protection of the propertied, and has never prevented gross infringements on the rights of the people—African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, women, working people generally, and political dissenters? Should we be concerned about a document that fails to address the most basic economic and social needs of our people? We believe the answer is yes, for the Constitution memorializes, as well, tremendous popular struggles, in the early days to ensure that popular rights were formally recognized, and ever since to realize in practice those formal guarantees.
Is it not becoming increasingly clear that the Constitution, with all its limitations, and even though honored more in the breach, is being assaulted by the ultra-Right and the powerful financial and corporate forces that stand behind it precisely because they find the Constitution increasingly an obstacle to their violent and rapacious schemes, find it increasingly vital to their agenda to destroy one after another the rights of the people proclaimed in the Constitution? Is it not becoming increasingly clear—and nowhere more starkly than in the Iran/Contragate affair—that implementing the program of imposing Fascism on the Third World requires bringing that same program back home?
Of course, no piece of paper, no Constitution, even one infinitely more democratic than ours, can guarantee democracy or by itself bar the way to Fascism. But history shows that the Constitution is extremely important, not as a substitute for but as a tool of mass struggle. Hence, we must not only work to protect the Constitution but to significantly expand its scope.
But the struggle against Fascism cannot be confined to the question of the preservation of civil liberties. While a useful component of the struggle, by itself it will not be decisive. Fascism can only be defeated by an all-out struggle against racism and sexism. It can only be defeated if a powerful mass movement is built around the pressing needs of the great masses of people, around jobs, housing, education, health. And it can only be defeated if these struggles become imbued with a high political consciousness which incorporates the issue of peace and recognizes our community of interest with working peoples around the world.
The struggle against Fascism also requires a new political vehicle. The behavior of the Democratic Party in the Iran/Contragate affair expresses both the reality of the struggle within the Establishment as well as its limitations. As an instrument of Big Business, along with the Republican Party, it cannot lead the struggle to defend democracy; to end the Cold War, to eliminate poverty, to eradicate racism and sexism as well as their vicious legacies, or to work toward a new society based on human need rather than profit-making of a handful of parasitical banks and transnational corporations.
The Democratic Party belongs to an obsolete, irrational and barbarous system. A new, truly democratic, truly people’s party must be placed on top of the agenda of all progressives. It may be premature to launch it now, but we must begin laying its foundation at once!
