i n t e r v i e w  | David McReynolds

David McReynolds is the Socialist Party candidate for president. He and running mate Mary Cal Hollis are on the ballot in seven states with write-in status in another dozen or so. A party member since 1951, McReynolds, 70, has been criss-crossing the country speaking to community, peace, church and labor groups on a $50,000 shoestring campaign budget.

Reporter Dibya Sarkar caught up with McReynolds and spoke with him about the presidential race, politics, and, naturally, labor. More information about McReynolds’ campaign and platform is available on the Socialist Party campaign site.

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PopPolitics: What is the role of the Socialist Party in the U.S. in the 21st century?

McReynolds: Good question and no easy answer. We face a problem in that we don’t really have a serious socialist movement in the United States and for a whole range of reasons ” Certainly, part of it was due to the Soviet Union and the identification of socialism with that. But for whatever reason, unlike almost all the rest of the world, there’s no significant labor party even here, let alone a socialist movement. That holds true whether you’re talking about the Communist Party or the Trotskyist Movement or the Social Democrat movement.

The Socialist Party is small, but it actually is no smaller than almost any of the other groups. I think DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] is larger than we are. The Communist Party might be marginally larger. We’re talking 1,200 for us, 3,000 maybe for the Communist, maybe 3,000 to 4,000 for DSA and everyone else is smaller than that. All of this is very sad.

I think one might turn the question around like: Why isn’t there a socialist movement? and ask, Why does [the party] persist? Why are there significant numbers of intelligent, reasonable people who have refused to say, “Well, OK, well, let’s give up capitalism as one.”

But certainly the Socialist Party, if it is to have a future in this century, has to abandon the pretense that it can become the party. Even if we return to the early part of the last century — 1912, 1920 — when you had high votes, what are you returning to? You’re returning to a high vote of 5 percent of the population. You’re returning to a role of being a very, very minor party. You get what I mean. You’re not returning to a point where you have half the vote, or a third of the vote, either, or quarter of the vote.

So that’s the psychological problem for everyone anywhere in the socialist movement: What is the role and how do you maintain the socialist position and yet work within a broader framework? Well, I don’t have a solution to that. I don’t have a life answer. But if you’re looking for what our role is, it is, in whatever way possible, to bring to bear a socialist analysis, which by necessity means a democratic analysis on the political and economic and cultural institutions of our society. To me, that is a Marxist analysis, but to many of the socialists, it’s not.

PopPolitics: When you say democratic analysis and you equate it with Marxist analysis, can you elucidate that?

McReynolds: Democratic means that whatever kind of system you’re going to end up with, if it is not democratic, you made a mistake. And democratic means you have a voice in it. It means that nobody has an enormous amount of money. There is an extraordinary amount of money in the hands of a few families in this country. That’s not democratic. It’s not democratic for one political party to have a monopoly of power as happened in the Soviet Union or is still, unhappily, in Cuba. That’s not democratic.

It’s not democratic if people of color are excluded from the political process although that’s increasingly less true in this country. There was a long period of time in which it was accepted that people of color — if they’re black, certainly — that color didn’t have a voice, period. So democratic means that everybody has a voice. It does not mean that everybody is equal. That’s not true. I mean I’m 6-foot, 3. How tall are you?

PopPolitics: Five-foot, 5.

McReynolds: All right, we’re not equal. I’m 70. How old are you?

PopPolitics: Thirty-three.

McReynolds: Okay, we’re not equal. So that business that everyone is equal is sort of nonsense. We’re not. We come in different colors, shapes, sizes, sexes, orientations and everything else. But everyone has to be treated equally before the law and everyone has to have a chance to vote on the decisions we make and that’s what democracy is about.

And it means even in the workplace you have a right to be heard. I don’t care if it’s McDonald’s or whether it’s the War Resisters League office where I worked for 39 years. You have a right to be heard and respected by the person who’s the organizer of the work and the person that we normally call the boss ” You have to have some input and the boss can’t just give orders that can’t be appealed or discussed.

That’s really very important, particularly when you shift to the economic area. If you’re talking about politics, what does it matter that you can vote once every four years or every two years if you can’t tell your boss that you think it’s wrong to pay too little wages or not to pay overtime? ” What does your democracy mean? I don’t mean if you can’t win the argument; that’s a different question. But if you’re afraid to voice your position because you’d be cut down or fired, then the political democracy is entirely pointless. It’s academic.

PopPolitics: And you believe people are afraid to voice their opinion in this day and age?

McReynolds: Oh, of course they are. Sure it depends on where you’re working, but look at the people even at the highest level of management, where they should be immune. The guy who revealed the stuff about one of the tobacco companies was very frightened to do that. ” They get fired from the defense industries [when] they make statements. They are harassed. They have a very hard time finding a new job somewhere else. Of course they’re frightened about voicing their opinion. “There are people who break your balls and are troublemakers, but I’m talking about your right to say, I think it would be better if we had a four-day week and worked nine hours, and we had a five-day week and worked eight hours — and just discuss that. 

These are the things people ought to be able to talk about in the workplace and they can’t right now or very rarely can. They can in cause organizations if the cause group is small enough. The work process can be organized democratically in groups such as the War Resisters League, [where] I worked for a long time, because the staff is very small. So you can do it democratically and it is done democratically. But most places don’t do it that way.

PopPolitics: So that isn’t really being addressed at this point at all in the political process.

McReynolds: No. No one is paying attention to it except the student generation has a concern about the stuff about migrant workers and sweatshops. I think they have a concern about people who are being driven into sweatshops and not being able to organize and terrified about standing up for their rights. And I think that [the students] do grasp that. I think students are closer to grasping this than people generally. I think the younger generation, even if they’re not students, tend to be and always have tended to be a little bit more idealistic.

PopPolitics: Regarding students protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund concerning globalization and corporatization policies, do you see them espousing the principles of the Socialist Party?

McReynolds: In some ways, yes I do [though they’re] certainly not related to the Socialist Party. We’re involved in the protests, but we certainly didn’t play the initiating role and didn’t play what you would call a “leading role.” It’s an entirely independent thing, which makes it exciting. If we organized it wouldn’t be very exciting, except to me.

I think the kids are on target and saying: Look, something is wrong with the global structure in that these decisions are being made and people don’t have a voice in them. And the IMF is laying down rules that govern countries that are in economic difficulty and cause absolute havoc in those countries particularly to poor people. The IMF has never passed a program that caused havoc to rich people, to the best of my knowledge.

PopPolitics: Does it surprise you that this is going on?

McReynolds: No. I’m not surprised. You expect some insurrection every 20 years or so. We’re overdue for one. I thought it would come in the “90s and it didn’t ” It’s a kind of cyclical thing and I don’t mean to be cynical but they do run in cycles. We had the “30s and the “60s and now we’ve got the, whatever [this era is called]. I’m not surprised and it’s sort of a normal process for some reason every 30 years to have rebellions.

PopPolitics: Do you see this affecting the political process that’s going on right now?

McReynolds: Sure I think it affects it, but I think the support for Ralph Nader is part of this. I think the enthusiasm for Nader has much less to do with Nader, whose actual track record is not very good outside of the issue of consumers. He was never involved in the civil rights movement, never involved in the Vietnam movement, never involved in the disarmament movement. He hasn’t had a good record in the labor issue until recently.

And in some ways Ralph has become more radical, I think, as he’s gotten older. ” But he’s not the focus of all this attention because he’s a heroic figure who’s been in the streets and jailed like a Martin Luther King. He had a good name, a reputable name, and he’s a good person. I think in some ways [he’s] a puritan and I don’t like that part of Ralph. I wish he’d relax a little bit. And he’s probably as baffled by the support he’s gotten as anyone else.

He is the focus of an enormous amount of enthusiasm of people who see Nader as, for the moment at least, the symbol of what they want. And that’s what made him an interesting figure even though he’s going to get less than 5 percent of the vote, I think. It makes him really interesting because he is getting significant support from largely a white audience.

I wish it was more of color. It’s largely a white student audience. And that’s the reflection of the times we’re in. I might wish that I had that support, but I don’t. I’m not Nader and the Socialist Party is much more radical than Nader and the Greens on many issues, on a number of issues. So we shouldn’t expect that and we haven’t got it. But Nader is a catalyst for a lot of energy that’s going on right now.

PopPolitics: As far as getting 5 percent of the vote, that’s the hope at least …

McReynolds: ” If Nader got 10 percent or 15 percent it would be great. I’m saying he won’t get it. And if he did, it could be dangerous for the Greens, because if you look at the Reform Party  — what happened is that because Perot got them 5 percent of the vote or more, they got this $12 million, but it’s not going to them. It’s going to Pat Buchanan who invaded the Reform Party, took it over, captured it, destroyed the Reform Party that existed up until a year ago, and has walked off with $12 million.

The danger of that $12 million that would be going to the Greens if they got the 5 percent, it would bring in every apparatchik, every ambitious political operator in the country into the Greens, and I think the Greens are not that together. You have two Green parties in the first place, not one. (The Greens/Green Party USA and The Association of State Green Parties) Most people don’t even know that. Two different organizations backing Nader. He doesn’t belong to either of them. I would really not want to risk what would happen if they got $12 million. It would be a real come-on to people: Wow, there’s a pot of gold; let’s move in and take it over. The Greens are not yet a coherent organization.

PopPolitics: They’re not strong enough, basically.

McReynolds: They’re not organized. They’re not together. In some places, I mean, if you talk to the Greens, if you meet with them, and I have, they’re good people. This is not an attack on the Greens. They are, first, divided into two groups. Second, they have a lot of personality fights. Third, they don’t have a clarity on the issues ” some think they’re socialists, some are primarily environmental, some are thinking in terms of a labor party. They don’t have a clarity on who their leadership is. They are not together. They are not prepared to get $12 million in the kitty at this point. If they got it, I don’t know what would happen to them.

PopPolitics: Then you’re saying any viable third party obviously has to be strong internally, but at this point, as far as the Green Party, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

McReynolds: Well, they should run as fast and go as far as they can. I’m making a critique which is not meant as hostile. I’m saying there would be problems they have not necessarily thought of if they got the 5 percent. The enthusiasm of which I’ve heard people say, “We have to get the 5 percent” has not been matched by an awareness of many of the internal problems they already have.

PopPolitics: What do you and the Socialist Party hope to accomplish in this campaign?

McReynolds: We hope to get, number one, more members. Not a lot, but a few more at least. ” [We] desperately need someone to raise [issues] because they won’t be raised otherwise, and I’ll just give you two or three of the issues that are worth running to raise.

The drug war, which ought to be abandoned. Marijuana, which ought to be decriminalized or legalized. The prison problem: We have two million people in state and federal prisons and five million if you count those who are on parole and under supervision. Foreign policy, the militarization - $350 billion for a military budget. Russia spends only $5 billion a year on their military and they’re going to cut it by a third because they can’t afford that. Our budget is insane. The Star Wars. Go down the list of those things you’re not going to hear a Gore or Bush talk about. And I can talk about them and we have talked about them and that’s good.

The other main thing, which we have accomplished to some slight extent, is making it possible to talk about socialism. Not to agree with it, but to talk about it, to say there is an alternative way of living together. We don’t have to be driven by profit; there are other ways of organizing an economy, and they haven’t occurred yet. Russia is not a good example. We haven’t seen it yet. We haven’t done it yet.

This is the early days for the industrial-technological revolution. It’s all happened in the last 100 years or so. And we think humanity can do better and we believe in its future and we want to discuss the concept of the social ownership and the democratic control of a large-scale economic enterprise. It’s not small business. It’s not the family farm. But we think the large corporations should not be making the decisions they make without being under some kind of social ownership, as well as the problem of the profit structure. What happens when those profits are privatized, which they have been under capitalism?

I’m not trying to get you to agree with me. My point is, if I can get you to say, “Hey maybe they’re not crazy. Maybe they have a point,” then I’ve won because you say, “Oh, they don’t mean totalitarianism. They’re not talking about Lenin. They’re not talking about Stalin. Well, they’re not crazy. They’re wrong.” That opens the door to the discussion. If I do that, then I’ve won what we’ve set out to do.

PopPolitics: In other words, gain respect from your opponents.

McReynolds: Not just gain respect, but to make it legitimate to talk about what socialism might look like as a viable concept. And I think it is a very viable concept. The New Yorker had an interesting piece, about two years. They were doing an issue on the millennium and they had the new cutting-edge technology, fashion and so on. One of them was on Karl Marx — “The Coming of Karl Marx.” It was a very interesting four- or five-page essay on the relevance of Karl Marx to this millennium and how correct he had been if you overlook some of the aspects of Marx, like Labor Theory of Value. And you look at his concept of the alienation of the worker from the means production, the commodification of human life, Marx is very relevant and there you have it [in] The New Yorker, not found in the Socialist Party news. That was important and that’s what the campaign is trying to do.

PopPolitics: Does Bernie Sanders give any legitimacy to the Socialist Party?

McReynolds: Yes I think he does. I don’t agree with Bernie on several things including the Iraq sanctions, but I knew Bernie before he went into the race for the mayor and of course on to the Congress. Bernie has spoken at the Socialist Party convention in the past and is a good guy. And I think Bernie helps not only make it legitimate, but also make it possible to think about people running independent elections locally and winning. You can’t win on the national level, it’s impossible. But you can win at the local level and Bernie did it. And in that sense, he gives legitimacy not only to the discussions of it, but much more importantly to the idea that anyone can run if they really pay attention and treat the voters with respect and can get out and work. All of which he did.

PopPolitics: Regarding the two major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, do you see any difference between the candidates?

McReynolds: Sure, of course, there’s a difference. First of all, one of them is stupid, one of them is very sharp. And that is not inconsiderable. Bush is not a moron, because if he was he couldn’t get around without handlers, but he’s very close to it in some ways. He remembers names well, I’m told. He’s very nice. I met his father once and I think it runs in the family: They’re not very bright and they’re very nice. 

Gore is very bright. Also, he’s impenetrable. No one knows quite who he is or what he is. People keep saying he relaxes if you meet him informally, but I read a long New Yorker piece about Gore, which said he doesn’t relax informally, or he’d be relaxed one second and then shift back into robot mode the next. He’s a very interesting person and we don’t know who he his. Clinton was sort of transparent. We knew who Bill Clinton was and I’m sort of charmed by Bill Clinton. We’re going to miss him. He’s a rascal, but he’s a populist rascal, he’s got style. Politically, I don’t agree with him, but we’re going to miss Bill Clinton.

” For people such as myself who are radical in their analysis, or revolutionaries — whatever that means — to go around and say there’s no difference in the major parties, of course there’s a difference. If you’re black it’s going to be somewhat different if Gore wins because he’s indebted to that. If you’re a trade unionist, he owes a slight payoff, not much, but some. I think many of the people backing Gore are backing him because Bush would be much worse on issues such as the trade unions and communities of color and the poor.

Bush is the candidate of the very rich and Gore is the candidate of the corporate state. But the agenda of Bush is the military agenda; it’s a conservative agenda, it’s pretty much a hidden agenda. It’s not one that’s out there in front. Out there in front he’s being very nice.

PopPolitics: How do you see Gore using these populist messages, such as the “working family” and Bush using the same thing, but calling it, say, the ‘middle class’?

McReynolds: Bush is for the wealthy. If you break it down and look at the tax cut, his tax cut is going to benefit those who make an awful lot of money. It’s not going to benefit those who don’t make much money. He’s thrown in some things so if you hear the commercials it sounds good until you break down the tax cuts.

Gore’s tax cuts will be much smaller, but the social services will cover people who are in genuine need. So, if you earn $50,000 or below you’re sort of stupid to vote for Bush if you’re voting for one of the two candidates, and sort of stupid if you don’t vote for Gore because those are the only issues that are on the election. Both of them are moral people as far as I know. Both of them support the military garrison state we have, which is not involved in the discussion, unhappily, at all, although Bush is more indebted to it. You see the military trotting in battalions to support Bush, which is a little worrisome. But on economic issues, Gore is better if you’re poor. If you’re rich, Gore is worse.

I think [Gore] is being pushed partly by Nader. And I don’t think anyone wants to say that, but that’s my guess. And I also think he’s doing that because that’s a winning position. His acceptance speech where he says, “I may not be the warmest guy, I may not be most relaxed guy, but I’m going to fight for you” was very convincing. He meant it in the sense that he committed himself to fighting for this category of people who are not fully entitled, not terribly rich and he will fight for them and Bush won’t.

PopPolitics: How do you see the outcome of the election?

McReynolds: I would be surprised if Gore lost. I thought from the beginning that Gore would win the election and I would be surprised if he lost. ” If you add up the fact that the country’s at peace and Bush is clearly not up to the job — and a lot of people know that — and the more he appears on television shows, the more obvious it becomes. But Gore is able to do a comedy show and come out looking as if he could still be president ” And Clinton could do this. Clinton could go on — what is that show for youth which I never watch cause I’m too old?

PopPolitics: MTV?

McReynolds: Yeah, MTV. And Bush couldn’t. I mean Bush may try, but he’ll fail if he does whereas Clinton was very at ease with that. And I think Gore is not at ease with them, but can make himself at ease with them in an odd sort of way. ” I think if you add up the prosperity and the fact that we have a calm foreign policy — there’s no crisis — and I expect Gore to do what always happens. You almost never see a candidate thrown out when the country is in a prosperous period unless there’s something else very, very wrong. And nothing is very, very wrong right now.

PopPolitics: With regard to movies and television, how do you view popular culture’s view of work and labor issues?

McReynolds: I’m not a good person to ask that. I don’t watch much commercial TV. I watch TV and I often watch very frivolous TV. I may watch Law and Order. I’ll watch any British mystery that is on or any British comedy that is on, but I really don’t watch the network shows. I watch West Wing, that’s the only network show that I watch regularly. So I’m a bad person to ask. I mean, I know about Jerry Springer. I’m very disturbed about Jerry Springer. I’ve seen the shows about Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I haven’t watched those shows. I listen to music and I watch British, stupid things, British comedy.

PopPolitics: Fawlty Towers?

McReynolds: Oh, I love Fawlty Towers. That’s old news now, it’s gone, but there are other British comedies that come on. We get them here on one of the public stations. Those I will watch faithfully and change my schedule around so I can catch them. I just don’t watch network programs. Law and Order, yes, but that’s sort of to relax at 11 o”clock at night. I’ll watch almost any mystery that’s on A&E that comes on at 11 o”clock on a Saturday night. I’ll relax, smoke a joint and watch it. But I’m a bad person to ask about popular culture. Of what I’ve seen of it, I’m horrified.

PopPolitics: What do you think about Hollywood’s influence, or supposed influence, on politics and political candidates telling Hollywood to rein it in? 

McReynolds: I don’t know how much influence they have on each other. I really don’t. I see some things in movies, which I think are very interesting. ” The Matrix was a very interesting film and I think very much a youth film in that it showed what happens when you look behind the scenes to find out that you’re being conned. I think The Matrix was in some ways a very subversive film.

PopPolitics: How so?

McReynolds: Because it really implied that we’re all being manipulated, which we are, and subversive to the established culture. And it said, Look you know things are not what they seem. The same is true in Fight Club which was a very brutal film, but I thought a very interesting film and also very subversive. I didn’t like the ending. I thought it was hoaxed in some ways.

PopPolitics: Critically it got panned, but a lot of people who’ve seen it have told me it’s really good.

McReynolds: I don’t know why it got panned. I think you should see it because it’s a film in which you see the rise of the kids in black that we’ve seen on the streets in which there’s an attempt to destroy the existing capitalist structure. It’s a film of enormous alienation by younger people and [of] enormous frustration [because they’re] hitting each other in an attempt to establish some reality. I just think it was a very subversive film along with The Matrix. Both of those films are films that resonate — that people need to see if they’re older to know what is happening inside the heads of younger kids.

Dibya Sarkar is a reporter for Civic.com. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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