PROFILE THEGoldber Workers World Party member Jerry Goldberg believes capitalism is the root of all evil. Assistant Editor erry Goldberg has lived many lives. In his childhood, he was president of the Chicago B'nai B'rith Youth Organiza- tion. In his college years at the University of Michigan, he denounced the Vietnam War and fought to eradicate racism. Today, he's a Marxist. Mr. Goldberg is a member of the Workers World Party, a national Marxist organiza- tion with some 1,000 adherents. The Detroit office is located downtown. A number of the members, in- cluding Mr. Goldberg, are Jewish. Earlier this year, Mr. Goldberg ran on the Mich- Mich- igan Workers World Party gubernatorial ticket, receiv- in ."a typical middle-class Jewish family," the son of immigrants. His father had suffered through pogroms in Russia. As a boy, Jerry at- tended Hebrew school and read from the Torah at his synagogue. In 1967, Jerry Goldberg came to U-M, where he says he became political because of the times. He opposed the Vietnam War and supported black rights. He became ac- tive in the radical Students for a Democratic Society, then affiliated with the Youth Against War and Fascism organization, of which the Workers World Party is an outgrowth. His initial interest in politics was because of the war, but anyone serious about such issues necessari- ly searches for their causes and cures, Mr. Goldberg says. That's what led him to communism or, as he calls it, "My Trotskyite-Marxist- Leninist origins." As a member of the Workers World Party, Mr. Goldberg holds as one of his goals a socialist society that provides basic needs — food, shelter and health care — for all. This doesn't mean living a spartan life, he stresses. Mr. Goldberg believes high technology should be utiliz- ed, always with the goal of helping all human beings. "Fifty million live in pov- erty in the United States," he says. "Yet the technology exists to liberate humanity." In this ideal world, each person would be allowed to develop "based on his own human potential." Physi- cians, for example, would no longer be motivated by mak- ing money but by serving humanity, says Mr. Gold- berg, who lives in Detroit. His second goal is eradicating racism, which includes anti-Semitism. He says the Workers World Par- ty is constantly involved in anti-facist activities like demonstrating wherever "Marxism is : fundamentally a science. The world is in a constant process of change. We adjust to the living reality of struggle." — Jerry Goldberg ing 50,000 votes. This tur- nout for what is essentially an unknown party shows that "people felt we had something to say," he states. His basic philosophy is simple: capitalism and imperialism are wrong. But the ramifications of that philosophy are much more complex. Even a devoted Marxist like Mr. Goldberg admits it took him years to come to terms with what is today a hallmark of the Workers World Party plat- form —condemning Zionism. "Israel is not a haven for the Jewish people," Mr. Goldberg says. "It is a deathtrap." Mr. Goldberg, who works at a local auto plant, was born in Chicago. He grew up Nazi groups march. The party also aims to guarantee reproductive, gay and handicapped rights, he says. Despite such lofty goals as helping the poor and homeless, the Workers World Party is not without its critics. Among them is John Judis, a writer for The New Republic who in an April 1991 article labeled the organization "a neo- Stalinist, Third World revo- lutionary fringe group that backed state violence in Tiananmen Square and sup- ports the right-wing opposi- tion in the Soviet Union." Mr. Goldberg brushes such Photo by Glenn Triest ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM esto Jerry Goldberg of the Workers World Party: "Israel is not a haven for the Jewish people. It is a deathtrap."