Communist Calls Capitalism Cruel

American capitalism is "the most socially delinquent force in history," Gill Green, one of the authors of the New Program for the Communist Party: U.S.A., said last night.

"We have more cars than any society ever," Green told about three dozen people at 2 Divinity Ave., "but also more insane asylums... and more Batman fans."

The drive for profit, Green said, is what leads giant corporations to produce unsafe cars, to pollute the air, and to keep the Negroes economically suppressed. "No one does these things deliberately," Green explained. "It's just more profitable to do so."

The solution, he said, is public ownership of production. It is inevitable in our cybernetic age as was capitalism at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Unlike some left-wing groups, the Communists advocate reform from within the two-party system as well as from without, Green said. "The problem of choice [between traditional parties and third parties] is a sterile one. We are for the running of third party candidates, but the time has not come for abandoning the two-party system."

In addition to using the established parties, Green suggested that Communists should not be afraid to use the statements of Democratic critics of the Johnson administration, like Senators Fulbright and Robert Kennedy, to apply pressure for withdrawal from Vietnam.