Vol. 6, No. 12 March 29, 1968
GEORGE SAUNDERS:
Students Clash
with Polish Regime
Why Kennedy is Challenging Johnson
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Robert Kennedy
Struggle Sharpens
in Czechoslovakia
20,000 in London
Protest Vietnam War
The Crisis
in Algeria
The Two-Price Gold System — by Dick Roberts
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WHY KENNEDY IS CHALLENGING JOHNSON FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION
By George Novack
On March 16, a few days after Senator Eugene McCarthy received 42.4 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced that he, too, had decided to challenge Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Unless, as is unlikely, the president refuses to run for a second full term, this portends a bitter battle between the two men at the Democratic convention at Chicago next August which will deeply divide the Democratic machine.
Kennedy's long deliberated decision to enter the race is a response to the serious predicament that has engulfed America's ruling class. It has been struck by the onset of three converging major crises: the specter of a military debacle in Vietnam created by the successful Tet offensive and the encirclement of Khesanh by the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces; the disintegration of the international monetary structure; and the pending confrontation with black ghetto-dwellers in the urban areas.
Each of these critical situations is linked with the others. The chronic imbalance of payments has been steadily worsened by expenditures for the Vietnam war and rendered acute by Johnson's declaration that he will send more troops. The tax increase and reduction in appropriations projected by the president and Congress to slow down the attack upon the dollar virtually excludes any substantial steps to meet the needs of the Afro- Americans and dampens any hopes for measurable improvement in their conditions or prospects.
The alarm that Johnson's course has produced within ruling circles is evidenced by the opposition to its disastrous consequences expressed by publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the San Francisco newspapers. These soberer heads have been unable to persuade or pressure the man in the White House to reassess or revise his reckless policy in Southeast Asia. They feel an urgency to get rid of an unpopular and discredited president and prepare a replacement for him, as they shifted from Hoover to Roosevelt after 1932. (The significantly strong vote for McCarthy from both Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire served to strengthen the fears which have already fissured the forces on top.
This is the underlying reason for the sudden emergence of so-called "peace candidates," such as Senators McCarthy and Kennedy and Governor Rockefeller, in both the Democratic and Republican camps.
Each of these aspiring capitalist politi-
cians hopes to ride the mounting popular
sentiment against the war all the way to
the White House.
Not one of the trio intends to
turn against the global imperialist strat-
egy pursued for decades by the Washington
policymakers of both parties or to cut
down the military machine which implements
and enforces it. McCarthy was ready to
serve as Johnson's running mate instead
of Humphrey in 1964 and has voted for all
war appropriations. While he talks about
negotiations over Vietnam, he does not
propose to withdraw U.S. troops from
South Korea where they have been stationed
for fifteen years after the truce there.
McCarthy noted that