WfJliKEIiS ".fifJ'RIJ SOt No. 683 ~)(~23 30 January 1998 As Clinton Militarizes Border with Mexico

Der Spiegel Palmer/U.S. News & World Report Immigrants face terror, exploitation from U.S. capitalist rulers: troops erect steel wall at Mexican border near Sail Diego, children toil for starvation wages in Manhattan garment sweatshop. Government Starves

As the capitalist rulers rub their the past two decades. And the elimi­ hands in glee over the sharp decline nation of relatively inexpensive pro­ in welfare rolls across the country, grams like AFDC is only the prelude millions more people grow gaunt Immigrants to a full-scale assault on Social Se­ from hunger. Since Democratic pres­ curity and Medicare. ident Clinton signed the bipartisan measure ending "welfare as we know Racist Repression it" in August 1996, already overbur­ Labor Must Champion Immigrant Rights! on the Border dened soup kitchens and food pan­ Along with driving immigrant tries have been besieged by people families to starvation, the Clinton desperately trying to feed themselves government has drastically beefed up and their children~ In denouncing this grow barer, immigrants who earn on "In racist America, where the words its arsenal of repression along the bor­ vindictive law, we wrote: "The vast in­ average about $10,000 a year find them­ 'welfare queen',have long served as code ders. Under codenames like "Operation crease in human misery resulting from selves giving up fresh meat, spending words for the black ghetto poor, the rul­ Gatekeeper" in California and "Operation ing class thinks it can get away with the new anti-welfare act is still uncharted, rent money on groceries, lining up at shredding welfare by playing the race Rio Grqnde" in Texas, border guards have but there is no doubt that many thousands food pantries and hunting for work in a card. Leaving aside the fact that the been equipped with advanced weaponry will starve and die-from hunger, from city where the unemployment rate stands majority of those on welfare are white, and increasingly reinforced with mili­ untreated contagious diseases, from ex­ at 9.1 percent, nearly double the national the 'welfare reform' bill is aimed at driv­ tary units. Numerous border cities have ing down the wages and further immiser­ posure, from homelessness-as a direct average." The situation has grown so dire ating the entire working class. This fact been closed off with mammoth steel result" (WV No. 650, 30 August 1996). that even Republican NYC mayor Ru­ is being brought home with a vengeance walls, including one in Nogales, Arizona While Democratic and Republican pol­ dolph Giuliani has launched a lawsuit to in the implementation of 'workfare' pro­ which the racist yuppie Clinton adminis­ iticians alike cynically have prated about force the federal government to restore grams aimed at busting the unions by tration grotesquely touts as being de­ moving people "from welfare to work," food stamps for immigrant families, forcing welfare recipients to work these signed to appear "friendly" to Mexico by jobs at starvation wages." . the deadly effects of this assault on the "extreme allowing "light and a feeling of open­ arguing that the cuts imposed What is happening in the U.S. is far poor are so evident this wi'nter that even hardship, hunger and malnutrition." But ness"! Deportations are at a record high from unique. With the heating up of inter­ the capitalist press has had to concede -over 110,000 last year-a 62 percent this racist pig has hardly become a imperialist rivalries in the wake of the that millions are being pushed to the champion of the poor: Giuliani just ap­ increase from the year before. destruction of the Soviet Union, the bour­ brink of starvation. The attack on welfare According to conservative estimates pointed as the city's new "welfare czar" geoisies have escalated their attacks on was promoted by a racist campaign vili­ the author of the Wisconsin plan which by the University of Houston's Center wages, working conditions and social pro­ fying "illegal" immigrants and especially served as the model for the federal anti­ for Immigration, nearly 1,200 people grams across the board in order to in­ the black ghetto poor, particularly women welfare law. died trying to cross from Mexico be­ crease their competitive edge against rival and children for whom Aid to Families tween 1993 and 1996, the vast majority Virtually every major city has expe­ capitalists. Particularly in West Europe, with Dependent Children (AFDC) pro­ of them drowning victims, while others rienced increased demand for emergen­ immigrants and ethnic minorities have vided a slim lifeline. In fact, nearly one were shot down by U.S. troops or cops. cy food aid, with two out of five appli­ been the principal targets of this drive, million "legal" immigrants were cut off A 1997 law gave Immigration and Natu­ cants currently employed. The savagery which is aimed against the whole of the from food stamps and other benefits. ralization Service (INS) agents sweeping of this onslaught, even as the capitalists proletariat. This is. evident in the U.S., as "Denied Food Stamps, Many Immigrants are wallowing in record profits, is bound­ real wages have fallen by one-fifth over continued on page 10 Scrape for Meals," headlined an article less: "illegal" immigrants suffering from in the New York Times (8 December AIDS-who had been granted temporary 1997), while a similar piece in the Los residency in cities like New York-are Angeles Times (27 December 1997) was now having their Medicaid benefits (and titled, "New Face in Line at Soup Kitch­ life-prolonging drugs) taken away, g~\'­ en: Working Poor." ing them the "choice" of dying a cruel In New York City alone, over 70,000 death here or back in their impoverished people are being turned away from food homelands. pantries each month as supplies run out. In pushing the war on welfare, "the The New York Times article noted: "As capitalist rulers seek to pit the white the months pass and kitchen cupboards working class against both blacks and immigrants by portraying them as a drain on the tax dollars of 'hard-working white folks' ," we wrote in the introduction to our January 1997 Black History and the Cl£lSS Struggle pamphlet ("Capitalist Rul­ ers Wage War on Blacks, Immigrants"). 7 25274 11 81030 ,J We continued: Editorial Notes

carried out one genocidal massacre after another against the Palestinian people, to Arafat Museum Visit Canceled denounce Arafat as a Hitler. In fact, the Palestinian nationalist leader is a toady of by Vile Zionist Outcry the Israeli Zionist state and U.S. imperial­ ism. The Holocaust Museum visit was in­ When the State Department organized Semitic types have been welcomed at tended to help revive the U.S.-sponsored a tour of the Holocaust Memorial Mu­ the Holocaust Museum. One of the for­ "peace process"-which has effectively seum in Washington, D.C. for visiting eign dignitaries who was feted at the been scuttled by the Netanyahu regime­ Palestinian Authority president Yasir museum's dedication in April 1993 was through which Arafat became an Israeli Arafat. it provoked a ·vile chauvinist fren­ none other than fascistic Croatian strong­ lieutenant in the national subjugation of zy byAmerican Zionists and Israeli prime man Franjo Tudjman, an open apologist the Palestinian masses. As proletarian minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling for the Nazi-allied Ustasha which slaugh­ internationalists, we fight for a socialist Gamma/Studio X right-wing Likud party. The Zionists pro­ tered hundreds of thousands of Jews and federation of the Near East, in which all An earlier visitor to Holocaust Mu­ nounced the Palestinian leader verboten Serbs during World War II. Two years the toilers of the region will achieve social seum: Croatia's Franjo Tudjman, apol­ at the federally funded museum, scream­ before that, the museum site was visited and nationalemancip·ation .• ogist for Ustashi fascists. ing that he was "Hitler incarnate." Only by Lech Walesa, then president of Poland, after this reactionary outcry had suc­ whose fascist-infested Solidarnosc up­ ceeded in canceling Arafat's visit did the holds the anti-Semitic Pilsudskiite dicta­ Zionists back off and say he was welcome torship of the 1920s and' 30s. To this day, The Mendacity of Anarchy after all. Walesa's chief "spiritual advisor" is a The furor over Arafat's proposed visit notoriously anti-Semitic priest named A reader recently brought to our atten­ cited, among other things, eyewitness was not only thoroughly racist but im­ Henryk Jankowski. tion an article by one "Max Anger" in the documentation in Yiddish and Russian­ mensely hypocritical. In pursuit of Zion­ It takes phenomenal chutzpah for the Spring-Summer 1997 issue of Anarchy: held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish ist Realpolitik, some truly sinister anti- Zionists, whose Israeli stormtroopers have A Journal of Desire Armed (!) headlined Research in New York City-attesting to "The Spartacist School of Falsification." anti-Semitic pogroms by Makhno's bands. The article purports to expose our sup­ Evidently unable to challenge our facts, posed lies about anarchist idol Nestor Anger peddled his lying wares in more Honor Lenin, Liebknecht, MakhnlOl, a Ukrainian peasant leader at sympathetic quarters. Luxemburg! the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution Anarchist diatribes against Bolshe­ In upholding the revolutionary traditions and the ensuing Civil War. What this vism/Trotskyism are nothing new. As we of the early Communist movement, this typically mendacious (i.e., deceitful, pre­ noted in our series, the anarchists also month the International Communist League varicating, false) anarchist anti-Marxist raised a hue and cry about Makhno-and commemorates the "Three Ls"-Lenin, Lieb­ drivel "omits" to mention is that, months the Bolsheviks' suppression of the coun­ knecht and Luxemburg. Karl Liebknecht was earlier, our Young Spartacus pages had terrevolutionary 1921 Kronstadt upris­ imprisoned during World War I for his oppo­ run both the relevant portions of Anger's ing-in the 1930s, when Trotsky was sition to the imperialist war, expressed in his "contribution" and a lengthy reply demol­ exposing and denouncing the treachery call, "The main enemy is at home!" Along ishing his numerous lies and distor­ of the Spanish anarchists, who joined the TROTSKY with Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish LENIN tions ("An Exchange on Nestor Makhno: Stalinists and social democrats in a capi­ Communist of Jewish origin, was a leader of Peasant 'Anarchism,' Pogroms and the talist government which suppressed a the revolutionary wing of the German Social Democracy and a founder of the Spar­ Russian Revolution," WV No. 656, 22 workers revolution. Today, the anarchists takusbund and its successor, the German Communist Party. They were murdered on November 1996). rush to embrace the imperialists' "death 19 January 1919 by military reactionaries as the Social Democratic government of Anger's ire was aroused by the seven­ of communism" lie. The current issue of Ebert and Scheidemann crushed the Spartakist workers uprising in blood. V.I. Lenin, part Young Spartacus series, "Marxism Anarchy (Fall-Winter 1997-98) promotes leader of the Russian October Revolution of 1917, died on 21 January 1924. We publish vs. Anarchism: From 1848 to the Bol­ a treatise titled Anarchism After Leftism, below Lenin's remarks on hearing of the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, writ­ shevik Revolution," which noted: which argues: "Cleansed of its leftist res­ ten as a postscript to his "Letter to the Workers of Europe and America." "The most significant counterrevolution­ idues, anarchy-anarchism minus Marx­ ary force under the banner of anarchism ism-will be free to get better at being The foregoing lines were written before the brutal and dastardly murder of Karl was the Ukrainian peasant-based army what it is." Indeed, petty-bourgeois hos­ of Nestor Makhno, which carried out Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by the Ebert and Scheidemann government. Those tility to Marxism and the proletariat is butchers, in their servility to the bourgeoisie, allowed the German whiteguards, the pogroms against Jewish communities and collaborated with White armies "what it is," pure and simple. As we watchdogs of sacred capitalist property, to lynch Rosa Luxemburg, to murder Karl against the Bolsheviks." commented in our reply on Makh­ Liebknecht by shooting him in the back on the patently false plea that he "attempted to - WV No. 650 (30 August 1996) no: "Max Anger's raving defense of escape." ... Evidently, history has chosen a path on which the role of "labour lieutenants When Anger leapt in to defend Makhno's Makhno's peasant bandits provides a of the capi~list class" must be played to the "last degree" of brutality, baseness and honor, we published our exchange with measure of the dementia that can be meaness. Let those simpletons, the Kautskyites, talk in their newspaper Freiheit about him in order to educate those leftist youth induced by bourgeois anti-Communism a "court" of representatives of "all" "socialist" parties (those servile souls insist that the mistakenly attracted to anarchism. We in the U.S.". Scheidemann executioners are socialists)! Those heroes of philistine stupidity and petty-bourgeois cowardice even fail to understand that the courts are organs of state power, and that the issue in the struggle and civil war now being waged in Germany is precisely one of who is to hold this power-the bourgeoisie, "served" by the Scheide­ manns as executioners and instigators of pogroms, and by the Kautskys as glorifiers of Tailing ·Mexican Nationalism, "pure democracy," or the proletariat, which will overthrow the capitalist exploiters and crush their resistance. The blood of the best representatives of the world proletarian International, of the IG "Disappears" the PRO unforgettable leaders of the world socialist revolution, will steel ever new masses of workers for the life-and-death 'Struggle. And this struggle will lead to victory. We in For some months now, the Internation­ phous "rebellious sectors" in the PRD's Russia, in the summer of 1917, lived thrQugh the "July days," when the Russian Schei­ alist Group (IG)-a small coterie of tow, like the peasant-based Zapatistas. As demanns, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, also provided "state" protec­ defectors from the International Commu­ we noted in correcting our own earlier nist League (ICL) in the U.S. and Mex­ designation of this formation as a popular tion for the "victory" of the whiteguards over the Bolsheviks, an~ when Cossacks shot the worker Voinov in the streets of Petrograd for distributing Bolshevik leaflets. We ico--has been fulminating against our front: "In the process of seeking to defend know from experience how quickly such "victories" of the bourgeoisie and their supposed revisionism on the nature of its characterization of the Cardenistas as henchmen cure the people of their illusions about bourgeois democracy, "universal suf­ Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' Party of the Dem­ a popular front, the IG in effect liquidates frage," and so forth. ocratic Revolution (PRD) in Mexico. any distinction between the proletariat­ Where we say clearly that the PRD is a which Marxists understand is the only - V. I. Lenin, "Letter to the Workers of Europe and America" (January 1919) bourgeois-nationalist party and counter­ class with the social power and consistent pose the need to break the Mexican pro­ class interest to lead the fight against cap­ letariat from nationalism and forge a rev­ italist class rule-and petty-bourgeois olutionary workers party, the IG insists forces" ("Mexico: For Workers Revolu­ that there is some vaguely defined "Car­ tion!" WV No. 672, 8 August 1997). denista popular front," echoing various After Cardenas was elected mayor of !~~'!!I!!or..~!!'!.~!!.!. ~ Mexican reformists and centrists in the Mexico City last July, the IG's Interna­ PRD's shadow. tionalist (September-October 1997) pon­ EDITOR: Len Meyers The whole purpose of a popular front tificated: "This is precisely the moment EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn -a class-collaborationist coalition of ref­ when Trotskyists should be dispelling PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller ormist workers parties and bourgeois par­ illusions among Mexican workers and CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mindy Sanders youth .... Yet at this very moment, the EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster, ties-is to subordinate the workers organ­ Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer izations to their class enemy. Writing on ICL leaders abandon the struggle against The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, the popular front just where it is the hot­ Internationalist). Trotsky noted that this purpose could be test." Behind the IG's cynical diatribes is Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276-0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and its refusal to challenge illusions in PRD August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist served even by including only "the Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 shadow of the bourgeoisie." But now the "left" bourgeois nationalism. This was (Business). Address ali correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected]. Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. POSTMASTER: Send address IG has conjured up a "popular front" with evident at a January 12 protest in New changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. no workers party! Instead, the IG is York City against the massacre of 45 Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. reduced to pointing to the tiny reformist Chiapas peasants by death squads linked The closing date for news in this issue is January 26. and centrist groups which tail Cardenas, to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary a handful of "dissident" union officials Party. One of the signs carried by the No. 683 30 January 1998 who speak at his rallies, or other amor- Spartacist League contingent read, "No 2 WORKERS VANGUARD According to Subcom. Marcos, "The direct respon­ sibility for these bloody events falls upon Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon and the Justice Ministry, who, two days ago, gave a green light to the counterinsur­ gency project presented by the Federal Army." (NC for DM: [email protected] 12/25/97) Nine men, 21 women and IS children-these peo­ ple, nameless, invisible, and dead, could very well be Mexican Massacre in Acteal: alive if the warnings had been heeded. But they were Indians. Indigenous people. Indigenes. How Many More? What if 45 whites were killed in a four hour-long paramilitary massacre? Their faces, their names, their In a ·vicious attack that lasted up to four hours at thousands of Indians were congregated, poor, ragged, lives, and their loves would be the daily fare of news­ least 45 of Mexico's indigenous people (men, women hungry and ill, refugees from villages in the Chiapan papers, magazines and television. and children) were massacred in the county of San highlands, under PRI guns. In a December 12th, 1997 But they weren't white. They were red. And just as Pedro de Chenalh6, in Chiapas State, several days communique, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos wrote the Zapatista warnings were ignored the brutal lives before Christmas, 1997. New accounts were generally of the repression waged against the indigenous peo­ and deaths at the hands of the PRIistas are fast on the sketchy, and rarely tried to make sense of the evil, ple, especially local (Chenalh6) Zapatista activists: way of being forgotten. savage event. "The state and federal governments and the Institu­ Until next time. The names of over two score dead were not worthy tional Revolutionary Party, far from stopping their of reporting, and the fleeting references to the Zapa­ wave of aggressions, are trying to avoid solving the 31 December 1997 main problem of Chenalh6, which is the eradication of tista Rebel Army (EZLN) only left many in a ball of their paramilitary groups and the return of the dis­ © 1997 by Mumia Abu-Jamal confusion. placed people to their communities. While it pretends One hears of this long, drawn-out, premeditated to establish a dialogue, Chiapanecan PRI followers are massacre, and wonders: Why? If the reader is at all undertaking the plunder and destruction of the evict­ To join the fight to free Mumia and for the latest like the writer, s/he saw or heard nothing at all like an ed's property. Coffee, cattle, clothes, and domestic updates on his case, contact the Partisan Defense utensils are being distributed among the paramilitary explanation for this planned explosion of death. The as the bounty of a war which, up until now, has only Committee, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, writer had to turn to the informative alternative to the seen shooting coming from one of the sides, that is the New York, NY 10013-0099; phone (212) 406-4252. establishment press, which, in this instance, meant government and its political party." E-mail: [email protected]. Urgently the Nuevo Amanecer Press, which offered what the (NAP: [email protected] 12116/97) needed contributions for Mumia's defense, which establishment media could not-context. These paramilitary groups, whose war'cry was "an are tax-deductible, should be made payable to the N.A.P. noted, in a communique issued weeks before end to theZapatista seed," have waged an insidious Bill of Rights Foundation, earmarked "Mumia the massacre by the Zapatista Central Command, that campaign against Indian communities in the south­ Abu-Jamal Legal Defense," and sent to the Com­ the indigenous people have been suffering for months east, of theft, robbery, brutality, rape, arson, murders mittee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam at the hands of paramilitary bands and state police, and then, mass murders. Avenue, No. 115, New York, NY 10023-5001. If you under the auspices and protection of the Institutional Subcommander Marcos' warning (of Dec. 12th, '97) wish to correspond with Jamal, you can write to: Revolutionary Party (PRI). Indeed, the area of the was all but ignored, and ten days later (on Dec. 22nd, Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 1040 E. massacre, San Pedro de Chenalh6, was a place where 1997) Chiapas was marked by an unholy massacre. Roy Furman Hwy., Waynesburg, PA 15370.

Memphis Defend Anti-Klan Protesters! The following protest letter was sent there to defend blacks, Jews, Hispanics, by the Partisan Defense Committee to gays, leftists, trade unionists and others William L. Gibbons, attorney general in the Klan has lined up in its cross hairs. Memphis, Tennessee, on January 23. Throughout the day, the police pro­ The Partisan Defense Committee con­ tected the Klan while lobbing potentially demns the vicious police attack on the deadly tear gas and pepper spray canis­ men, women ana children who came out ters against the protesters, who included to protest a march by the hooded-and­ children and elderly people. The cops robed lynchers of the Ku Klux Klan in themselves admitted to planting at least Memphis on January 17. Now your office 50 undercover agents in the protest. i-s persecuting 26 anti-Klan protesters These agents began assaulting the anti­ who were arrested by the cops, cynically Klan demonstrators when they protested branding them as "gang members." We against provocateurs distributing racist demand that all charges against these pro­ white-supremacist literature among them. testers be dropped immediately! While the Klan was allowed to spew The Klan's racist provocation against its racist filth and program for genocide, Martin Luther King Day-in the city the anti-Klan protesters were attacked where King was assassinated 30 years and arrested by the cops for the "crime" ago-was a threat challenging not only of exercising their right to protest against the right of black people to a place in Klan terror. Drop all the charges against the Memphis anti-Klan protesters! American society but to their very right Riggs/NY Times to live. The multiracial crowd of hun­ Richard Genova for the Memphis, January 17: Demonstrators protest racist Klan provocation against dreds who poured out in protest were Partisan Defense Committee MLK Day.

Support to the Capitalist PRD-Build a and an opponent of the escalating imperi­ Revolutionary Workers Party of the Bol­ alist subjugation of Mexico. Writing the shevik Type!" Yet after spilling pages PRD out of its placards, the IG demon­ of ink on the "crucial," "urgent," "vital" strates that its insistence on a ''Carde­ t.P.tiRac. < necessity of fighting a supposed PRD nista popular front" is simply the vehicle ~~~::: >~~_;~.J~~,,> ~ ,', ":<:0.1';~~'\J,', [~j~·il:!<·]J.h Jt "popular front"-at this very moment for adapting to bourgeois nationalism. :!,Publi~ationof!!J!!i,~,rUpO" "' - .. O~~DII!l"" IiIhICQs.:.,OII when illusions in the PRD as an agency Nationalism has historically been the :~~t;spa!1~.qlJistalt!,~~xICO:.· . Mexico: iPor la for "justice" were heightened-the IG main instrument for tying the proletariat ''«\,~ A, >,~J.: ,':', ," -"<~::;: ,,'~~'>vt,,~ revoluci6n obrera! turned up with placards that made no and dispossessed masses of Mexico to La Mlzqulen:hl" aJembl'll 1fU.1oneI en .1 PAD neckmen.te burgu6e

""'''~~.'''''E£Wm~=~~~~ IWL!!"y=~.=:==-~= Em,.....so .... -' ~"'~ .... mention of the PRD! their exploiters. Caught in the grip of No. 10, FaU-Winter 1991:~~:!;! I' ClIIdodoioh1edoo-.l!I ...... I_&al{,Rl).q.... ~a/"""""r;v ...... ~IO~)III ...... ,....-...... ~.IQI{U ...... l' ..lb. lI'"""dol~ ... "JvtkIo ...... ""'PRI ... :;:~....:.=-=«.c""t:'.:.=~bI...... ~::::.::=:...~~= Negrete. In fact, "the people" the IG is nent revolution-the seizure of power 1Ionoudo ....,...... poq_r-... M>o.Io~ ... ~J-Ion:o""~ / ;;...... _--,_...... 1I!1rIC&bnni~Karl Marx completed and cally welcomed the French Revolution, I submitted his doctoral dissertation and as a mature and respected bourgeois in philosophy, entitled "Difference Be­ intellectual he became an ardent sup­ tween the Democritean and Epicurean porter of Napoleon, whom he dubbed Philosophy of Nature." His ambition and "the world-soul on horseback." Here it's intent was to become a professor of phi­ important to point out that Napoleon was losophy at a German university, that is, an ex-Jacobin and onetime protege of a respectable bourgeois intellectual. His Robespierre, whose memory he always close friends and colleagues were teach­ held in high regard. For its part, the Ger­ ers or students of philosophy of the He­ man League of the Just was rooted in the gelian school. His writings were direct­ theoretical, political and organizational ed toward-and only intelligible to­ tradition begun by Gracchus Babeuf's intellectuals thor0ughly familiar with Conspiracy of Equals of 1796, Babeuf German philosophy, its various tenden­ himself having earlier been a Jacobin cies and disputes. militant. Six years later, Marx joined and be­ In a sense, there were two paths leading came a principal leader of an under­ from the French Revolution to Marxism: ground communist organization, largely a rightward path from Napoleon through composed of workingmen, dedicated to Hegel to the Young Hegelians; and a left­ the overthrow of every government in ward path leading from Babeuf and Europe, first and foremost the Kingdom Philippe Buonarroti through Blanqui to of Prussia. The nature of his new com­ the German League of the Just. These two rades can be gauged by the political biog­ paths converged in 1847 when the former raphy of Karl Schapper, the organization's Young Hegelian intellectuals Marx and leading figure before Marx joined it. Engels effected a revolutionary regroup­ In the early 19th century, the storming ,Mansell Collection ment with erstwhile German Babouvist of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 was for militants to form the Communist League, leftist youth what the storming of the whose doctrine and program was codified Winter Palace in Petro grad in 1917 was in the Communist Manifesto. for leftist youth during much of the 20th Both Hegel and Babeuf were members century. They all dreamed of ,storming of that generation of young intellectuals their own Bastille and igniting a great, who believed that with the French Revo­ world-shaking revolution. In the mid-· lution the principles of the Enlighten­ 1830s, about 50 revolutionary "hotheads" Storming of Bastille ment were being transformed into reality. in central Germany-among them Karl Decades later, when in his fifties, Hegel Schapper, a 21-year-old student of for­ in July 1789 inspired fighters against recounted in a lecture to his students estry-decided the time for dreaming was tyranny around the (published in The Philosophy of History over and they should just do it. So they world. Overthrow [1956]) the apocalyptic atmosphere ush­ took over a police station in Frankfurt. and arrest of ered in by the storming of the Bastille Needless to say, this adventure was easily Robespierre (left) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and quickly suppressed by the authorities. five years later and Citizen: signified triumph Schapper managed to escape arrest "The conception, the idea of Right and made his way to southern France, of Thermidorian asserted its authority all at once, and the where he joined a ragtag army led by reaction. old framework of injustice could offer no Italian radical democrat and nationalist resistance to its onslaught. A constitu­ Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini's army of tion, therefore, was established in har­ mony with the conception of Right, and national liberation, numbering about 300 on this foundation all future legislation men, promptly irivaded the Kingdom of was to be based .... This was accordingly Savoy-the strongest absolutist state in ers-mainly Frenchmen, with, a contin­ guys tried to storm Windsor Palace aim­ a glorious mental dawn. All thinking Italy-whose forces easily repelled the gent of Germans-in central Paris, where ing to overthrow Queen Victoria. But this beings shared in the jubilation of this epoch. Emotions of a lofty character revolutionary invaders. they set up barricades and declared their time he decided to change his strategy stirred men's minds at that time; a spiri­ But once more Schapper was un­ intent to overthrow the government of and tactics. I'll discuss this a little later. tual enthusiasm thrilled through the scathed and this time he made his way to Louis Philippe, the so-called bankers' What I want to emphasize here is how world, as if the reconciliation hetween Paris, the political and spiritual center of king. This time Schapper and his German radical a change Marx underwent be­ the Divine and the Secular was now tirst the European revolutionary movement. comrades were arrested, along with Blan­ tween 1841 and 1847. It was not simply accomplished." There he joined the newly formed League qui and the other leaders. his ideas about the world that changed, The belief that heaven was about to of the Just, a secret communist soci­ However, there was considerable popu­ but every significant aspect of his public descend to earth necessarily led to a dis­ ety largely composed of emigre German lar sympathy for the insurgents, so Louis life and to a large extent his private life as musionment among the youthful idealists workers. The League had close ties to Philippe decided simply to expel Schap­ well. How and why did this young aca­ who had held this vision. Both Babeuf similar French secret societies led by the per and the other German communists, demic philosopher become a leader of a and Hegel expressed this disillusionment, redoubtable Auguste Blanqui. One fine who then went to London. I would like working-class-based, communist move­ , albeit for very different reasons, in very spring day in 1839, Blanqui assembled to recount that two months after arriving ment aiming at the revolutionary over­ different ways and with yery different about a thousand of his armed follow- in England, Schapper and 2,000 other throw of the existing European social and conclusions. Babeuf maintained that the 4 WORKERS VANGUARD French Revolution did not go far enough. He therefore inaugurated a movement and tradition defined by communist ideal­ ism and revolutionary voluntarism. Hegel decided that the French Revolution had gone too far, too fast; that the French peo­ ple were not spiritually mature enough to achieve heaven on earth. He thus became an advocate of gradual-very gradual­ reform from above. In his last years, he wrote in his 1821 work, The Philosophy of Right, that political change should be such that "the advance from one state of affairs to another is tranquil in appear­ ance and unnoticed. In this way a consti­ tution changes over a period of time into something quite different from what it was originally." Marx came to believe in communism and proletarian revolution and, in that sense, embraced the Babouvist tradition. But he also adhered to Hegel's anti­ utopian realism. Like Hegel, he main­ BibliothSque Nationale Musee Carnavalet tained that revolutionaries could not sim­ Jacobins attempted to replace Christianity with new state religion based on deism, expressed in artworks of the time: ply reconstruct the world at will according "Regenerated Man" triumphant over superstition (left), "Feast of the Supreme Being." to their own moral ideals. In Marx's first work as a self-considered communist, in izens, to ensuring them liberty, equality kings and nobles; and we cannot con­ existence demands the abolition of pri­ 1844, he states: "It is not enough for and fraternity. ceive of it with them." vate property altogether. That extension -reproduced in George Rude, was soon made by ex-Jacobin mili­ thought to strive for realisation, reality More than a century after the French ed" Robespiene (1967) must itself strive towards thought" ("Con­ Revolution, Leon Trotsky called the rise tants such as Babeuf, Buonarroti, Sylvan tribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philos­ of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Robespierre concludes by proposing the Marichal and others. following legislation: ophy of Law: Ilitroduction," Karl Marx Union in the 1920s a "Thermidorian re­ But before discussing this I want to "Article I. The French people recognizes and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, action." When you think about it, this is the existence of the Supreme Being, and say something about the Jacobin "Ter­ Volume 3 [1975]). In other words, men an odd term used in no other context. It the immortality of the soul. ror," since it played a central role in the can change society only insofar as society does not derive from a person (there was "Article II. It recognizes that the best development of Hegel's political atti­ itself has changed so as to make possible no Joe Thermidor), place or movement. way of worshipping the Supreme Being tudes and theories. Over 90 percent of their goals and program. It derives from the month that Robes­ is to do one's duties as a man. the people executed under the "Terror" Communism is possible not because pierre was overthrown by a right-wing "Article III. It considers that the most were in the two regions of France beset important of these duties are: to detest it is a moral ideal but because its eco­ Jacobin faction. But you might say, there bad faith and despotism, to punish by full-scale civil war. They were people nomic preconditions have been created is no month called Thermidor in French. tyrants and traitors, to assist the unfortu­ who were captured arms in hand fighting by industrial capitalism along with a Not today there isn't. However, in 1792 nate, to respect the weak, to defend the against the revolutionary army. People social class-the proletariat-with a the leaders of the French Revolution oppressed, to do all the good one can to were not executed for merely expressing one's neighbor, and to behave with jus­ vital interest in economic collectivism. decided to signify their total break with tice towards all men." opposition to the Jacobin government Thus he and Engels wrote in their 1846 the past by scrapping the Gregorian cal­ and its doctrines. Catholic priests were In other words, the Jacobins believed it work, The German Ideology: endar and beginning world history anew not killed or imprisoned for giving sacra­ was possible by law to instill in the "Communism is for us not a state of with the year I, written in Roman numer­ ments to the faithful, or whatever Catho­ French people unselfish concern for their affairs which is to be established, an ideal als. They also gave new names to the lic priests do with the faithful. (Not part fellow man; to use the language of the to which reality [will] have to adjust it­ months, such as Thermidor, Fructidor of my personal experience, thank god!) self. We call communism the real move­ day, to instill "patriotism" and "virtue" and the like. Some Catholic priests were killed for ment which abolishes the present state of as the dominant principles of social and things. The conditions of this movement Along similar lines, the Jacobins at­ inciting peasants to insurrect against the political life. result from the now existing premise." tempted to establish a new state religion, revolutionary government. The Jacobins represented a revolution­ based on deism, which would replace However, counterrevolutionary propa­ ary minority of the French bourgeoisie. Jacobin Idealism Christianity. Robespierre's speech pro­ ganda-liberal as well as reactionary­ They did not come to power through To understand both the Hegelian com­ posing this new civic religion is a good portrayed the Jacobin "Terror" as what gaining a majority of the votes in elec­ ponent of Marxism as well as its Ba­ expression of the Jacobin world view. As would later be called "totalitarian thought tions to the revolutionary parliament, the bouvist heritage, we have to take a closer a true son of the Enlightenment, he begins control." The Englishman Edmund Burke Convention, which would have required denounced Robespierre and his col­ support from a majority of the peasantry. leagues for seeking to establish a reign of Rather, they came to power by organiz­ virtue through a reign of terror. This was ing an insurrection of the Parisian lower a lie, but a lie that was widely accepted, classes-the so-called sans-culottes­ especially outside France, and one which which overthrew the more moderate bour­ has been perpetuated and has remained geois faction, the Girondins, then gov­ Gracchus Babeuf widely accepted ever since. publicized early erning the country. Consequently, the communist ideas Robespierre regime had to conciliate the The Babouvist Tradition in his journal, was Paris artisan proletariat which constituted later executed for its main base of support against its many During the Jacobin regime, Gracchus leading 1796 enemies, both within and without France. Babeuf served as a local official adminis­ insurrection by The Jacobin regime was. waging war tering the food supply in a working-class Conspiracy of against most of the rest of Europe as district in Paris. Thus on the basis of his Equals. well as civil wars against royalist forces own firsthand experience he recognized in key regions of France. These wars in­ that attempts by the revolutionary govern­ evitably caused enormous economic dis­ ment to regulate the capitalist market in locations and shortages. The combined the interests ofthe workers and poor were pressure of the sans-culottes from below continued on page 6 look at the French Revolution, especially by pointing to the enormous progress in and the dislocations of war forced the its ideological dimensions during its science and technology over the previous revolutionary government to institute a most radical phase, the Jacobin regime few decades: "Compare the imperfect primitive version of a controlled econ­ of 1793-94. If the young Hegel, viewing language of hieroglyphics with the mira­ omy, for example, setting a maximum Spartacist League the upheaval in France from across the cles of printing .... Measure the distance price for basic foodstuffs such as bread. Public Offices Rhine, believed that heaven was about to between the astronomical observations of Given its idealistic ideology, the Jaco­ -MARXIST LlTERATURE­ descend on earth, imagine the apocalyp­ the wise men of Asia and the discoveries bins did not justify these policies on tic fervor of the men actually leading the of Newton." He then goes on: pragmatic grounds-as temporary emer­ Bay Area revolution. "All has changed in the physical order; gency measures-but as a manifestation Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m. all must change in the moral and politi­ 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) The Jacobin leader Saint-Just declared of the fundamental rights of man. Thus that happiness was a new idea in Eu­ cal order. One half of the world revolu­ Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 tion is already achieved, the other h,alf Robespierre declared: Saturday: 2:00-4:00 p.m. rope. Obviously, he was not talking about has yet to be accomplished.... ' "Which is the first object of our polity? the momentary happiness of individuals: 123 Townsend St. (near 2nd St.) "The French people appear to have out­ To guarantee the imprescriptible rights Dial #826 for entry long before the French Revolution, men stripped the rest of the human race by of man. And which is the first of these San FranCiSCO, CA Phone: (415) 777-9367 and women were happy when they fell in two thousand years; one might even be rights? That of existence. The first so­ love, when they had a healthy infant tempted to regard them as a distinct spe­ cial law is, therefore, that which assures Chicago cies among the rest. Europe is kneeling to every member of society of the means of Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 12:00-3:00 p.m. whom they wanted, when they got drunk the shadows of the tyrants whom we are existence; all others are subordinated to 328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904 and partied all night (though perhaps they punishing. it; property has only been founded and Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 454-4930 were not so happy the next morning). "In Europe a ploughman or an artisan is protected to give it greater strength." Saint-Just was talking about collective an animal trained to do the pleasure of a -Robespierre New York City Saturday: 1:00-5:00 p.m. happiness as a permanent social condi­ noble; in France the nobles seek to trans­ If, as Robespierre maintained, the right form themselves into ploughmen and 41 Warren St. (one block below tion. He meant that the French democratic artisans, and cannot even attain this to exist permits and even justifies restric­ Charnbers St. near Church St.) republic was the first state in Europe honor. tions on private property, it is but a logi­ New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 committed to the well-being of all its cit- "Europe cannot conceive of life without cal extension to maintain that the right of 30 JANUARY 1998 5 trampled in the dust, but will themselves take and appropriate them." Enlightenment ... -quoted in Shlomo Avineri, (continued from page 5) Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (1972) at best inadequate and at worst totally However, over the next several years ineffectual. Merchants evaded the price this naive democratic idealism and opti­ maximum by hoarding and selling at mism dissipated and were replaced by a higher prices on what we would now call moderate liberalism which for Hegel rep­ the black market. After Robespierre was resented a reconciliation with social and overthrown, all economic controls were political reality as he viewed it. A key abolished, and the conditions of the work­ factor in Hegel's rightward evolution was ers in Paris and other French cities dete­ his extremely negative reaction to the riorated'into ever greater wretchedness. Jacobin regime in France. In part this Considering these developments dur­ represented a reaction to what actually ing the Thermidorian reaction, Babeuf happened in France at this time, and in concluded that the right to existence part it was based on a common mis­ was fundamentally incompatible with the understanding of this crucial historical right of private property. He therefore Institute for Social History, episode. developed a crude system of communism. Amsterdam Even when he was a democratic ideal­ This was a communism of distribution, ist, Hegel opposed social leveling and not production-though Babeuf did ad­ regarded the right to property as an vocate agricultural collectivism rather important guarantor of individual liberty. than peasant smallholding. In Babeuf's Thus he denounced what he termed view, peasants and workers would pro­ Jacobin communist "sans-culottism" in France. At the same duce as before but would deliver their Auguste Blanqui time, he believed that Robespierre and products to government warehouses rather participated in July his colleagues had resorted to mass ter­ 1830 revolution which ror in order to impose on the French peo­ than sell them on the market. The govern­ brought down ultra­ ment would then distribute these goods reactionary French ple their own philosophical principles, equally and in proportion to need, Those Bourbon regime. such as deism, and their concept of revo­ families with more children would re­ lutionary morality. He later wrote that ceive more food, clothing, etc. the French Revolution represented The Conspiracy of Equals in 1796 was H. Roger-Viollet "for the first time in human history the an attempt to realize this communist pro­ that the bold action of a small group of left-Hegelian component is far harder to prodigious spectacle of the overthrow of the constitution of a great actual state gram through an armed insurrection­ revolutionary militants could inspire the understand and has been subject to much and its complete reconstruction ab initio centrally based on the artisan proletar­ masses to rise up in revolt against the confusionism and mystification. [from the beginning] on the basis of pure iat of Paris-against the Thermidorian oppressive monarchical regimes. thought alone, after the destruction of all regime. The movement was suppressed However, after experiencing defeat in Hegel's Political Biography existing and given material. The will of by the authorities before it reached the the streets of Paris in 1839 and being the refounders was to give it what they I think the easiest way to approach alleged was a purely rational basis, but it stage of insurrection and the principal expelled from France to England, lead­ was only abstractions that were being leaders were arrested and tried. While ing German communists such as Karl Hegel-and I said easiest, not easy-is to used; the Idea was lacking;. and the Babeuf was sentenced to death, another Schapper and Joseph Moll reconsidered first consider his political biography. experiment ended in the maximum of leading figure, Buonarroti, was only the Blanquist strategy. They concluded Before we descend to the mind-bending frightfulness and terror." -Hegel's Philosophy of Right imprisoned for a time, possibly because that the mass of workers had not heeded depths of Hegelian philosophy, we should As a criticism or even understanding his mistress had seduced one of the the revolutionaries' call to arms because look at the major historical events which affected him and how he responded to of what actually happened during the judges. they did not understand and therefore did French Revolution, Hegel's view was For the next 40 years of his life, Buo­ not support the communist program. them. profoundly wrong. But as a criticism of narroti sought to keep alive the princi­ Consequently, adherents of the League Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in 1770 in the principality of Swabia Jacobin ideology, Hegel was in this ples and program of Jacobin communism, of the Just-which was centered in Lon­ first in the hostile climate of the Napole­ don but also existed in Paris and other onic empire and then under the even European cities-now devoted them­ more reactionary conditions of the post­ selves to propaganda and education, post­ Napoleonic restoration. In 1828, he pub­ poning the revolution to an indefinite lished in Belgium a history of the Con­ future, Ironically, it was the former left­ spiracy of Equals, including many of Hegelian intellectuals Marx and Engels its original documents, a book which who had to convince the former revolu­ became known as "the bible of revolu­ tionary adventurers Schapper and Moll tionaries." At one point the young Marx that popular insurrections in Germany considered translating this book into and France were possible in the histori­ German. cal short term. In 1830, the ultra-reactionary Bourbon During the 1970s, I gave a lecture regime in France was overthrown by a series under the heading "Marxism and popular revolution and replaced by the the Jacobin Communist Tradition," which less repressive monarchical regime of was published and is available in the Louis Philippe. For a time the political bound volumes of Young Spartacus. So situation in France was relatively open. what I know and think about this subject Buonarroti thus returned to the country is accessible in far greater detail and of the Revolution and was able to inter­ analytical elaboration than I can convey Raccolta Stampe Bertarelli, Milan sect and influence a new generation of to you today. Therefore I'm going to Radical democrat Giuseppe Mazzini strove to unite Italy. A short-lived Roman leftist militants, the' outstanding figure devote the rest of this talk to Hegel and Republic was proclaimed in February 1849. among them being Auguste Blanqui. his school, the intellectual and political At that time there was a sizable popu­ development of the young Marx and cer­ in southwestern Germany, a relatively respect on the mark. The Jacobins did lation of emigre German workers in Paris, tain controversies about this. I'm weight­ economically advanced region in that believe they could sweep away the old and a number of these were won to Jaco­ ing this educational in this way not then-divided country. His father was a society and rebuild the world anew bin communism and came under the sway because I consider the left-Hegelian com­ senior government bureaucrat involved in according to their ideals-not only in of Blanqui's secret societies. Central to ponent more important in understanding finance and trade. Hegel's background terms of social, economic and politi­ the B1anquist strategy was what might be Marxism than the Jacobin component-I was thus typical of the German bourgeoi­ cal institutions but in all fundamental called military vanguardism, the belief don't think that-but rather because the sie of the Lutheran persuasion. He was aspects of popular consciousness. Robes­ educated in the spirit of the German pierre, Saint-Just and their comrades Enlightenment, which was more ideal­ believed that through an act of will or SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY istic, more concerned with individual even an act of law they could eradi­ morality and spiritual values, so to speak, cate almost 2,000 years of Christianity, National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116· (212) 732-7860 than the English and French versions of respect for traditional authority and even the Enlightenment. individual egoism. Hegel was right that Los Angeles Oakland Boston no government-even a revolutionary Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 As previously noted, he enthusiasti­ Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 cally welcomed the French Revolution government-possesses absolute freedom (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 and believed that the rights of man were to reconstruct society according to its about to triumph on the German side of own principles and ideals. As Marx later Chicago New York San Francisco the Rhine as well. In 1795, he wrote to wrote in a very Hegelian passage in his Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494 Box 6441 , Main PO 1852 work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107 his friend and fellow philosopher-in­ (312) 454-4930 (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367 training, Friedrich Schelling: Louis Bonaparte: "I believe that there is no better sign of "Men make their own history, but they the times than the fact that mankind as do not make it just as they please; they such is being represented with so much do not make it under circumstances cho- TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA reverence, it is a proof that the halo , sen by themselves, but under circum­ which has surrounded the heads of the stances directly encountered, given and Toronto Vancouver oppressors and gods of the earth has dis­ transmitted from the past. The tradition Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. appeared. The philosophers demonstrate of all the dead generations weighs like a Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 this dignity [of man]; the people will nightmare on the brain of the living." (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 learn to feel it and will not merely demand their rights, which have been lTO BE CONTINUED] 6 WORKERS VANGUARD The" Publie Policy Series of New York Post Squeals as New York "niversit}' Reaganite Pig D'Souza's Views Blasted at NYU Distorting D'Souza Scurrilous editorial in Moor York ~ (aod ODd ""-Retoou'o GIber liDo, be bad . ". _beeo-...a rL~farIe The following was issued as a leaflet Actually Zulu Nation, a multiracial Rupert Murdoch rag IIWIIbon rL __ Bat be .... .wi iD- on January 21 by the New York Sparta­ student group, was barred by campus screams for expulsion of -IIJ---""" ~"Ibe""'t.t:.."C...~ cus Youth Club. security from entering the event be­ anti-racist students who 16 December 97 which be aItlI

AP Spartacist

6IOilnereHb CnaptruroallOO ISPARTACIST I ~,..~

Yeltsin on barricades of counterrevolution, August 1991 (left); ICL leaflet proclaimed: "Soviet Workers: Defeat Yeltsin-Bush Counterrevolution!" ICL supporters raised banner of Trotskyist Fourth International at November 1991 Revolution Day rally in Moscow.

30 JANUARY 1998 9 was seized by the INS last spring buy legal residency by investing $1 mil­ Immigrants ... and threatened with deportation on the lion in a business here. grounds that 23 years earlier he had been (continued from page 1) sentenced to one year's probation, for Labor Must Champion having had sex with a 15-year-old girl­ Immigrants' Rights! new powers, allowing them to summarily friend! A victim of both state racism Campaigns against immigrants serve exclude visitors and bar them from re­ and the reactionary anti-sex witchhunt, as an ideological weapon to further divide entry for up to five years. So tight have Collado was locked up in an INS dun­ the American proletariat along race and the border restrictions become that geon for six months before an outcry of national lines. To defend the jobs, wages even many Canadian citizens have been protest won his release. and union rights for all workers, labor denied entry. Now airports have begun While the wretchedly chauvinist Amer­ must champion the rights of immigrants implementing new computerized pro­ ican labor bureaucracy joins with capital­ and other minorities. Brutally exploit­ cedures to screen for "potential terror­ ist politicians in ranting against "foreign" ed immigrants from Asia and Central ists," clearly targeting travellers from the workers stealing "American" jobs, the America are forced to toil in garment Arab world, Africa and other regions assault on immigrants has nothing to do sweatshops across the country for sub­ who fit the government's racist "profile" with "saving" jobs. American capitalism minimum wages. And even many who are for "terrorism." has long relied on undocumented immi­ in unions and have legal residency work Clinton's 1996 "Anti-Terrorism and grants to provide the labor for physically at wage and piece-work rates barely Effective Death Penalty Act" greatly demanding, dangerous jobs that others above the legal minimum. expanded not only the range of federal won't touch-an estimated 40 percent of We call for full citizenship rights for Hathcox/USA Today 1986 clothing workers' rally: bureau­ offenses punishable by the racist death the country's two million farm laborers all immigrants and for organizing the crats' chauvinist protectionism chains penalty but also those offenses-some as are "illegal a:liens." Indeed, one effect of unorganized, on both sides of the U.S.­ unions to U.S. capitalists' interests. minor as shoplifting-which can get militarizing the border with Mexico is to Mexico border. But this perspective is legal residents deported. The draconian allow through only young, physically fit anathema to the pro-capitalist AFL-CIO tenants of the bourgeoisie oppose from sweep of this law was recently spot­ males who are capable of working in bureaucracy headed by John Sweeney, the standpoint of a protectionist crusade to lighted by the case of 43-year-old New grinding farm labor, by keeping out wom­ despite their occasional words about "or­ bolster U.S. industry. In contradistinction York restaurant manager Jesus Collado, en and children who can't cross through ganizing" immigrant workers and "soli­ to the chauvinist, job-trusting labor tops, who moved here from the Dominican treacherous, hilly terrain. Moreover, un­ darity" with Mexican workers. Far from we opposed NAFTA as a "free trade" rape Republic when he was a youth. Collado der a 1990 law, rich people can literally defending undocumented workers against of Mexico by U.S. imperialism and called the savage repression meted out by la for international labor solidarity in strug­ migra, in 1996 Sweeney's AFL-CIO gle by workers in the U.S. and Canada called for "effective control of illegal im­ with Mexican workers-for example, migration," including an additional 700 those battling U.S. corporations for basic border patrol cops. Likewise, United union rights in the maquiladora border Farm Workers (UFW) president Dolores factories. Huerta and other AFL-CIO officials made A real fight to organize immigrant a show of launching an organizing drive workers would help reinvigorate the for California's brutally exploited, over­ American labor movement, bringing into whelmingly immigrant strawberry pick­ the unions workers from Central America ers. But far from mobilizing union power and elsewhere with a history of bitter to ensure victory in this struggle, the class struggle against U.S. imperialism labor tops devote their efforts to opposing and its local death squad regimes. Black a Republican bill to bring in 25,000 more and Hispanic workers, including a sizable farm "guest workers." number of immigrants, played a promi­ The labor bureaucracy sees the world nent role in last summer's Teamsters through the same lens as the capitalists strike against the UPS bosses, the first and their government and embraces the significant victory for American labor in goals of U.S. imperialism, chaining the decades. To unchain labor's power re­ workers to the capitalist class enemy quires above all a political struggle to through support to Clinton's Democrats. oust the racist, pro-capitalist bureaucracy WV Photo Indeed, about the only significant differ­ and to forge a revolutionary workers Watsonville, California march in support of strawberry workers' organizing ence Sweeney & Co. have with Clinton is party which champions the cause of all drive, April 1997. AFL-CIO tops refuse to unleash union power to defend and over "fast track" trade legislation-and the oppressed as part of the fight for organize immigrant workers. earlier, NAFTA-which these labor lieu- socialist revolution .•

smashing of the bourgeois form of state could come into existence without smash­ most grotesque means to draw a blood Workers apparatus." Does this mean that capital­ ing "the bourgeois form of state appara­ line to seal off political discussion. We ism was not really destroyed in East tus," the latter-day Kautskyites of Work­ won't fall for it-we will continue to Europe, Cuba, etc. Ul la Cliff)? Or does ers Power reveal their true program­ pursue open political debate because it is Power... it mean that capitalism can be over­ pushing social-democratic parties like through the clash of opinion and test of (continued from page 9) thrown without smashing "the bourgeois the Australian Labor Party (ALP) or the competing programs in action that Len­ stand for military defence of the Bosnian form of state," an open repudiation of British Labour Party into getting rid of inist parties are forged. Serbs under massive NATO bombing Leninism Ca la Karl Kautsky)? capitalism. Workers Power are counterfeit Trotsky­ blew apart the LRCI as most of their Specifically against the German Social Indeed, WP's Stalinop,hobic support to ists who deny in practice the necessity of New Zealand group and all of their Latin Democrat Kautsky, who opposed prole­ every sort of counterrevolutionary scum building a revolutionary vanguard party to American supporters split away. Reveal­ tarian revolution, Lenin said that "the in the former Soviet Union and East bring to the working class genuine class ing a continuing political schism, Work­ proletariat cannot simply win state power Europe is a reflection of, and capitulation consciousness-the understanding that it ers Power reports that "At the Fourth in the sense that the old state apparatus to, the pro-imperialist social democracy, is their historic mission to take state Congress, the former minority position passes into new hands, but must smash which since 1917 sought the destruction power in their own name. WP fatuously secured a narrow majority. The Congress this apparatus, must break it and replace of the October Revolution. From Aus­ denies the devastating effects of the adopted the view tqat the bureaucratic it by a new one" (The State and Revolu­ tralia to Europe, wherever the social­ destruction of the Soviet workers state, Stalinist overturns took place without the tion). By asserting that workers states democratic parties are fronting for the saying "the worst of the counterrevol u­ capitalist offensive, Workers Power can tionary effects of those defeats have be found behind them. In Britain, they already been experienced in the previous backed Tony Blair's Labour Party, while period, and do not lie ahead." That's easy in the French elections last May they for them to say from where they sit in openly called for a vote to the class­ Contents include: comfort in the West! collaborationist alliance of the Socialist On the contrary, we of the ICL recog­ • Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants! Party, the Communist Party and various nise that this is a new period in world his­ Immigration and bourgeois formations-a popular front. tory, one conditioned by colossal defeats Racist "Fortress Europe" In Australia, WP shores up the hold of the for the proletariat. As Leon Trotsky wrote • Farrakhan and the racist Labor Party on the struggles of the in his 1937 article, "Stalinism and Sudan Slave Trade exploited and oppressed, claiming that Bolshevism": workers' illusions in the ALP can only • Black Churches Torched "In these conditions, the task of the van­ Across the South "be broken by putting Labor to the test of guard is above all not to let itself be car­ office," i.e., vote ALP, no matter what. ried along by the backward flow: it must Mobilize Labor/Black Power swim against the current. If an unfavor­ to Smash Racist Terror! At root, the anti-Sovietism of WP able relation of forces prevents it from • Courageous Fighter expresses their acceptance of the "demo­ holding the positions that it has won, it Against Racist Terror cratic credentials" of their "own" bour­ must at least retain its ideological posi­ Robert F. Williams, 1925-1996 geoisie as good coin. Indeed, they have tions, because in them is expressed the dearly purchased experience of the past. • NYC Transit "Workfare" Deal deeply imbibed the values of the Austra­ Fools will consider this policy 'sectar­ Enslaving the Poor, lian ruling class, not least its profound ian.' Actually it is the only means of pre­ Busting the Unions anti-woman bigotry. At a large workers paring for a new tremendous surge for­ demonstration on 12 November in Mel­ ward with the coming historical tide." $1 (48 pages) bourne, a Workers Power leader, Lloyd, Workers Power members who seek Marx­ Black History is sent responded with vile misogynist epithets ist ·clarity and a forward, revolutionary to all Workers Vanguard to political debate about their position on perspective, the fight for new October subscribers the former Soviet Union and their Labor­ Revolutions, would do well to undertake ism, twice hurling the word "c--t" at our a serious investigation of the Trotskyist Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 comrades. This illustrates that the leader­ politics of the International Communist ship of Workers Power will try to use the League.. '

10 WORKERS VANGUARD by which the main European countries leL agreed to do away with passport checks at their respective frontiers. This points up the real purpose of Schengen: to con­ Statement ... solidate racist "Fortress Europe" against (continued from page 12) refugees and immigrants fleeing the In Germany, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's exploitation and inhuman conditions in Christian Democrats (CDU) are also wag­ backward countries under the boot of ing war against that country's two mil­ imperialism. Like the 1992 Maastricht lion immigrants and refugees of Turkish Treaty, which envisioned a common Eur­ and Kurdish descent. Their children­ opean currency by the end of the century, including those born in Germany-were Schengen was billed as a step toward forced last year to apply for visas in order melding the existing capitalist societies to remain in the country. Turkish leftist into a single supranational European and Kurdis.h·nationalist groups, including state. But this is reactionary utopianism. the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), are The bourgeoisie, by its nature, is a nation­ banned. Even showing the Kurdish na­ ally limited class, whose rise to power tional colors is illegal, as it is in Turkey. was closely associated with the consoli­ Having used its economic muscle to dic­ dation of powerful nation-states, serving tate the terms for "the dismemberment of to protect the bourgeoisie's national mar­ the former Yugoslav deformed workers ket while competing internationally with state, which resulted in millions of refu­ rival capitalist states. As Russian revolu­ gees, Bonn moved last year to expel some tionary Leon Trotsky wrote during World 300,000 Bosnian immigrants-the big­ War II and on the eve of the Nazi Aluminum factory in the Ruhr. Turkish and Kurdish workers are strategic gest mass deportation since Hitler's Third Holocaust: component of industrial proletariat in Germany. Reich. Now, German interior minister "The world of decaying capitalism is Manfred Kanther enjoins Italy to "secure overcrowded. The question of admitting imperialism, while forging a bloody alli­ those countries to forge revolutionary a hundred extra refugees causes a major ance with the anti-Palestinian Zionist multinational workers parties committed its borders," declaring that Germany will problem for such a world power as the not accept a "criminally organized migra- United States .... Amid the vast expanses rulers of Israel. And when PKK leader to the national liberation of Kurdistan Kani Yilmaz visited London three years through socialist revolution. The Kurdish ago to push for a "political solution," he proletariat in diaspora-in the major was arrested and imprisoned for two industrial centers not only of the Near years before- being extradited to Ger­ East but (together with Turks) of West many, where he is now on trial for lead­ Europe-represents the living bridge ing a "terrorist association." Freedom for between the struggle for the emancipation Kani Yilmaz! of the Kurdish nation and proletarian rev­ While the Near Eastern bourgeoisies olution in imperialist West Europe. are the immediate oppressors of the This is the perspective of Trotsky's per­ Kurdish people, there can be no self­ manent revolution for countries whose determination for the Kurds without capitalist development has been retard­ opposing imperialism and its repeated ed by imperialism: the tasks of politi­ interventions in the area. Following the cal democracy and national emancipation 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurdistan was de­ can only be achieved through the sei­ clared to be a "safe haven" for Kurds, to zure of power by the proletariat as the be policed by the U.S. and other imperi­ leader of the subjugated nation, linked alists under a UN fig leaf. Yet the Turkish to the fight for socialist revolution in regime, armed to the hilt by the U.S. and the advanced capitalist countries. This Germany, has repeatedly invaded this perspective requires the construction of "safe haven" to round up and kill support­ Leninist vanguard parties that combat ers of the PKK. every form of social and national op­ The national emancipation of Kurdi­ pression as an integral part of the strug­ stan requires the revolutionary overthrow gle for working-class political power. For Italian Trotskyists initiated August 1993 protest in Milano to denounce racist of four capitalist regimes-Turkey, Iraq, a Socialist Republic of United Kurdi­ cop terror, call for labor to champion full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Iran and Syria-among which the 25 mil­ stan in a Socialist Federation of the Near lion Kurds in the Near East are parti­ East! Down with imperialist "Fortress tion movement because of world conflicts of land and marvels of technology, tioned, and the throwing off of the yoke Europe"! For a Socialist United States of like Bosnia" (Frankfurter Rundschau, 7 which has also conquered the skies for of imperialist domination. The allies and Europe! For the reforging of Trotsky'S man as well as earth, the bourgeoisie has January). managed to convert our planet into a foul motor force for Kurdish emancipation are Fourth International to fight for new Meanwhile, the-Social Democrats (SPD) prison." to be found in the proletariats of those October Revolutions worldwide! This is are attacking Kohl from the right, de­ - "Imperialist War and the countries, who have their own scores to the task to which the International Com­ nouncing the CDU government for not Proletarian Revolution" settle with their exploiters. It is vital in munist League is dedicated .• pressuring Rome earlier to stop Kurdish (June 1940) immigration and calling for restoring The racist policies being pushed by the strict border control between EU coun­ capitalists and their social-democratic tries. SPD-ruled Hamburg has been turned henchmen have greatly reinforced fascist International Communist League into an anti-immigrant police state. The bands throughout Europe, who feel they SPD election campaign there last fall have a green light to carry out murderous (Foutth Internationalist) was so obscenely racist that even the attacks against immigrants and leftists. International Center: Box 7429 GPO, New York, NY 10116, USA bourgeois press was forced to note that it However, the ultimate aim of these racist Spartacist League of Australia ...... Spartacist League, GPO Box 3473 was "one of the most xenophobice!ec­ shock troops of capitalist reaction is the Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia tion campaigns conducted by the left in eradication of the whole of the organized Spartacist League/Britain ...... Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041 post-war Germany" (London Independ­ workers movement. Immigrant workers ent, 22 September 1997). In whipping are a key component of the industrial pro­ Trotskyist League of Canada/ London NW5 3EU, England Ligue trotskyste du Canada ...... Trotskyist League, Box 7198, Station A up anti-immigrant racism, the SPD has letariat, whether they be· Kurds in Ger­ Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1X8, Canada also given a green light to Nazi thugs many, North Africans in France or black throughout Germany. Africans in Italy. French workers, in a Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands .... SpAD, Postfach 5 55 10127 Berlin, Germany In Bremen, where the SPD governs to­ series of mass demonstrations protesting gether with the CDU, imprisoned Kurds the expulsion of sans-papiers over the Dublin Spartacist Group...... PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 Republic of Ireland facing deportaHon are waging a hunger past two years, have shown the potential strike against torture, overcrowding and for mobilizing the multiethnic proletariat Ligue trotskyste de France ...... Le Bolchevik, B.P. 135-10 other abusive conditions. Six of the pro­ against racist terror. In Germany, a num­ 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France testers are said to be in imminent danger ber of protests and strikes have united Spartacist Group India/Lanka...... write to Spartacist, New York of dying. An SPD state justice ministry ethnic German and foreign-born workers, Lega trotsklsta d'italia ...... Walter Fidacaro official was forced to resign, but his as in last spring's powerful week-long C.P. 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy replacement contemptuously dismissed miners strike. The crucial need is to break Spartacist Group Japan ...... Spartacist Group Japan the hunger strike as taking place during the workers from the reformist betrayers PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku the month of Ramadan "fasting time" and the forging of revolutionary workers Kita-ku, Tokyo 115, Japan (Neues Deutschland, 8 January). Mean­ parties as part of a Leninist-Trotskyist Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico ...... J. Vega, Apdo. Postal 1251 while some 370 Kurdish prisoners are international party. , Admon. Palacio Postal 1 undertaking a hunger strike in a Turkish The petty-bourgeois nationalist PKK C.P. 06002, Mexico D.F., Mexico jail in the city of Erzurum. We say: calls on the UN and imperialist powers Spartacist/Moscow ...... write to Le Bolchevik, Paris Down with the ban on the PKK and the to broker a "political solution" to the Spartakusowska Grupa Polski ...... Platforma Spartakusowcow Turkish leftist Devrimci Sol! Free all Kurdish question in Turkey. The EU is as Skrytka Pocztowa 148 leftist and Kurdish nationalist political much an enemy of the Kurds as the 02-588 Warszawa 48, Poland prisoners! Down with the racist "laws on Turkish government. A major reason for . Spartacist/South Africa...... Spartacist, PostNet Suite 248 foreigners"! Full citizenship rights for all the recent rejection of Turkey's bid for C~Hlton Centre immigrants! EU membership was the fear by the Ger­ Level 100, Shop 140 The frantic rush by Italy's European man and other bourgeoisies of massive Commissioner Street Johannesburg 2001, South Africa neighbors to impose border controls immigration by Kurds and Turks. Mean­ against Kurdish immigration fly in the while, the Turkish bourgeoisie jockeys Spartacist League/U.S...... Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 10116, USA face of the 1995 Schengen agreement for support between U.S. and German 30 JAN UARY 1998 11 WfJlIllEIiS "/1'"'111)

DPA Piscitelli/Arcieri Desperate Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Iraq have been thrown into concentration camps by popular-front government in Italy. "Fortress Europe" Bars Kurdish Refugees We publish below a January 12 protest trade blocs, such as the European Union ized working class, are doing the racist anti-refugee policies in Europe. With the statement by the International Commu­ (EU), which are reactionary attempts dirty work for the imperialists. While ref­ support of Rifondazione Comunista (RC), nist League denouncing a chauvinist by the imperialists to compete for mar­ ormists and centrists support them as a the other by-product of the breakup of campaign against Kurdish refugees by kets abroad while savagely attacking the supposed "lesser evil," these parties are, in the reformist Italian Communist Party, the West European bourgeoisies. Euro­ working masses at home. The cutting the words of Lenin, "bourgeois workers this racist regime has passed laws that pean sections of the ICL have distributed edge of the capitalist offensive is racist parties" based on the organized working threaten up to 300,000 people with depor­ this statement in English, French, Ger­ tation. Last spring, the Italian navy sank man and Italian under the headline: a ship in the Adriatic packed with desper­ "Down With Racist 'Fortress Europe'! ate refugees fleeing chaos and poverty in For a Workers· Europe! Asylum for Kurds Albania, killing 89. With the blood of and All Refugees from Right-Wing Ter­ this massacre on its hands, Italian impe­ ror! Full Citizenship Rights for All II[e rialism then sent troops to establish Immigrants! " "order" in Albania. Meanwhile, thou­ terror against immigrants and refugees, class but sworn to protect the capitalist sands of Albanian refugees who made it The Turkish regime's 13-year war who are scapegoated for the growing mis­ order. The parliamentary governments to Italy were herded into concentration against the Kurdish population has devas­ ery and unemployment created by the they form, whether in ·Qoalition with camps and quickly deported. Today, those tated Eastern Anatolia, totally destroying capitalist system itself. The ruling classes the bourgeois parties or alone, are cap­ same camps are used to imprison Kurdish some 3,500 villages and forcing more of Europe have deliberately fomented italist governments, carrying out the refugees. Responding to German dictates than three million Kurds to flee their racist hysteria as the ideological prepara­ anti-immigrant and anti-working-class that his government crack down on Kurd­ homes. Kurds in northern Iraq have also tion for new imperialist wars and to policies demanded by their bourgeois ish refugees, a PDS minister-speaking been repeatedly hit by military.offen­ divide the workers and poison their class masters. on the eve of a meeting of police chiefs sives-most recently last month-carried consciousness. In Italy, the coalition government of from Turkey and the EU-vowed to out by Turkey with the backing of its Throughout Europe, it is the social the ex-Stalinist Party of the Democratic "fight with the most absolute firmness NATO allies, the U.S., Germany, Italy democrats and ex-Stalinists who, using Left (PDS) and various bourgeois politi­ against illegal immigration." and France. This comes on top of the their positions of leadership of the organ- cians enforces one of the most vicious The policies of the French coalition seven-year starvation blockade of Iraq government of Socialist prime minister following the massacres carried out by Lionel Jospin have been as anti-immigrant NATO/UN troops in the 1991 Gulf War. as its Italian counterparts and as racist Yet, when 900 Kurds from Turkey and as its conservative predecessors. Jospin's Iraq, along with other refugees fleeing popular front-a class-collaborationist right-wing terror, arrived last month off coalition of the Socialists and the French the Italian coast in two packed freighters, Communist Party with bourgeois pol­ the European imperialist powers, with iticians-was elected on a wave of Germany in the lead, launched a hysteri­ mass strikes and demonstrations against cal, racist campaign against the "refugee neo-Gaullist Alain Juppe's racist, anti­ flood." The racist masters of capitalist working-class policies. Yet the popular Europe are determined to keep out the front has continued the racist "Vigipirate" victims of right-wing terror, racist per­ campaign in which the army is used to secution and desperate poverty gener­ terrorize immigrant ghettos. The govern­ ated by their drive for profit in the neo­ ment's "new" laws on immigration are colonial Third World. The International in some ways even more restrictive than Communist League demands: Down with the reactionary laws of the previous re­ the NATOIUN starvation blockade­ gime! Meanwhile, the sans-papiers (un­ Hands off Iraq! Turkish army out of documented workers) are to get the boot: Kurdistan! No deportations! Asylum for Jospin toured Morocco, Senegal and Mali Kurds and all refugees from right-wing last month to prepare the mass deporta­ terror! tion of over 100,000 people. And as hys­ Capitalist counterrevolution in the teria was whipped up over Kurdish ref­ Soviet Union and East Europe has sharp­ ugees, massive contingents of French ened interimperialist conflicts over the Action Press police were sent to seal off the Italian redivision of world markets. This has led Turkish government's war of terror in Kurdistan has forced more than three border against Kurds. to the creation or consolidation of rival million Kurds from their homes. . continued on page II

12 30 JANUARY 1998