soe WfJlillEIiSNo. 791 """'Ii'~X.623 15 November 2002

For Class Struggle Against Imperialist Warl Break with the Democrats! For a Workers Party! On November 8, the United Nations Security Council gave its fig leaf to the pending military assault on Iraq by U.S. imperialism. The ballyhooed opposition by France and Russia, among others, pointed to widespread fears of Washing­ ton's increasingly bellicose "unilateral­ ism." At the same time, the unanimous vote simply underlines that it is the "world's only superpower" that calls the shots in the UN and that the other mem­ bers of this den of imperialist thieves and their victims all have their price. Criminal, but· hardly surprising, was the Chinese government's support for the UN resolu­ tion, with one of its representatives at the UN crowing: "The sunlight of unity is about to come." The "unity" proffered by the traitorous Stalinist bureaucracy in Beijing to the imperialists helps pave the way for the U.S. to realize a central ambi­ tion-reconquering the Chinese deformed workers state for imperialist exploitation. The UN vote came a mere three days after the American midterm elections, which gave the RepUblicans control of the House and Senate. The Bush gang, which rode into office on a minority of the vote, seized on the criminal killing of WV Photo thousands of innocent civilians in the Washington, D.C., October 26: Revolutionary Internationalist Contingent organized by Spartacist League/Spartacus September 11 attack on the World Trade Youth Clubs offered alternative to pro-Democratic Party politics of demonstration organizers. Center to get a lock on power, declarjng a "war on terrorism" against any perceived Democrats didn't even make a pretense of of Washington, D.C. and San Francisco in lized by the demo organizers? The dead enemy, domestic or fore'ign. Bush & Co. fighting for the "little man" when polls demonstrations to "Stop the War on Iraq ends of moral-witness pacifism and elec­ view their midterm victory as giving showed that voters were far more con­ Before It Starts" last Saturday, with soli­ toral pressure politic·s. them something like the "divine right of cerned about jobs, pensions and health darity rallies taking place in many other In Washington and San Francisco on kings"-the "right" to do whatever to care than about the "war on terror" or cities. Traveling to D.C. from all over the October 26, we Marxists in the Spartacist whomever. Iraq. But the policies being pursued by Midwest, Northeast and South, protesters League and Spartacus Youth Clubs mobi­ It's more tax cuts for the rich and in­ the Bush administration are in many filled the streets for several blocks on a lized revolutionary internationalist con­ creasingly no rights for anyone else, as respects simply the hardcore extension march around the White House. With the tingents with banners and signs based the Constitution is put through the shred­ of policies that were implemented under crazed U.S. imperialists in the advanced on a counterposed set of demands: "For der of "homeland security." The Bush the Clinton White House, from the abro­ stages of planning a mass slaughter of the class struggle against the U.S. capitalist administration now sees smooth sailing in gation of constitutional rights such as Iraqi people, it is a welcome development rulers! Defend Iraq against U.S. imperi­ appointing such federal judges as Priscilla habeas corpus for death row defendants that large numbers of youth are actively alist attack! Down with the UN starvation Owens, the virulent anti-abortion bigot and the destruction of welfare programs protesting against U.S. military action in blockade!" We sold our press, soapboxed currently seated on the Texas Supreme to bombing raids against Iraq. The only Iraq. But on what basis were they mobi- continued on page 9 Court, and Mississippi's Charles Picker­ difference is that Clinton claimed to ~'feel ing, whose credentials include a 1959 your pain" while the Bush administration law review article advocating that the revels in it. state's laws against interracial marriage The idea that the Democrats are the be strengthened. And with the wind in the "friends" of labor and blacks has, long sails of these nuclear madmen, the rest of been used to keep the working class, 'black the world had better watch out, too. people and the oppressed locked into the Among supporters of the Democratic electoral shell game, through support to Dog Days Party there is much hand-wringing over the capitalist Democratic Party. Such illu­ its poor showing in the election, with sions are also strengthened by putative left recriminations flying over the absence of organizations such as those that organized James P. Cannon vs. any stand that would have indicated even and endorsed the October 26 protests nominal opposition to the Republican against war on Iraq in Washington, D.C. Max Shachtman in the agenda. Indeed, it is notable that the and the Bay Area. We print below an ed­ ited version of a presentation at a Novem­ Communist League 46 ber 2 Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth ~ Club forum in New York City given by of America Young Spartacus editor Michael Davisson.

Nearly a quarter* *million * protesters SEE PAGE FOUR 7 111.2 5 2 7 4 11 8 1 0 3 01 III 7 from across the country took to the streets Bay Area Labor Black League for Social Defense initiated the first labor-centered Pdrti§dU Defeu§e mobilization in defense of immigrants tar­ geted under the U.S. rulers' "war on terror­ £0...... it tee ism" and in opposition to the USA-Patriot Act and the Maritime Security Act. CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES We urge you to contribute to and help build the Holiday Appeal. This is not an act of charity, but rather the duty of fight­ ers against injustice to those inside prison walls as we struggle for their freedom. 8ulld PDC H.,ld., IIppe.' Mumia Abu-Jamal, award-winning Jennifer Beach journalist, former Black Panther Party Mumia Abu-Jamal spokesman in his youth, supporter of the for Cltlll .. WtlI PI/IOllell! MOVE organization and defiant opponent of the Ohio 7. They are radical activ­ ists with a shared history of opposition "All through history those who have to provide extra funds and holiday gifts of racist state terror. In 1982 Mumia Abu­ to racism and imperialism. Sentenced to fought against oppression have constantly for them and their loved ones. Jamal was railroaded to death row at the 45 years to life under RICO conspiracy been faced with the dungeons of a ruling The fight for these class-war prisoners hands of Philadelphia's notorious cop and , class. The greater the cause has been, and laws on allegations of bank expropria­ is all the more urgently posed today as a court frame-up machine on demonstrably the deeper it has been rooted in the needs tions and bombings targeting symbols of defense of all of us against a ruling class false charges of killing Philly police offi­ and suffering of the masses, the more it U.S. imperialism in the late '70s and '80s. has been menaced by the tortures of which aims its military arsenal against cer Daniel Faulkner. The PDC pamphlet Jaan Laaman was transferred to South prison cells. The number of victims taken Iraq and its arsenal of state repression Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man! from among the ranks of those who have Walpole, MA. Ray Luc Levasseur is in against any perceived opponent of its reprints the sworn confession of the man fought for a cause has been the measure Atlanta, GA. vicious class rule at home. The "war on who actually did shoot and kill Faulkner, of its greatness. No cause is a great one Hugo Pinell, the last of the San which has not produced fighters in its terror" is wielded as a cover for gearing Arnold Beverly. Beverly's account is Quentin 6 still in prison. Militant anti­ ranks who have dared to face arrest and up the government's power to spy on the affirmed in accompanying declarations by racist, leader of prison rights organiz­ trial and imprisonment. The fear of a rul­ population, jail activists and trade-union Jamal and his brother William Cook, who ing class, and the effectiveness of those ing along with George Jackson, who militants, and indiscriminately round up was at the scene of the shooting. who struggle against them, can always be was murdered by prison guards in 1971. immigrants. In a frontal attack on basic The pamphlet also features the affida­ measured by the number upon whom they In prison for over 37 years. In January wreak revenge in this way .... constitutional rights, the government has vit of PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein, Pinell was again denied parole and he "The victory of the class-war prisoners is declared that anyone, immigrant or citi­ who was a member of Jamal's defense continues to serve a life sentence at the possible only when they are inseparably zen, deemed an "enemy combatant" can team from 1995 to 1999. It compellingly united with the living labor movement notorious Pelican Bay Security Housing be imprisoned indefinitely with no right marshals the evidence of his innocence and when that movement claims them Unit in California. to a trial or an attorney. That these attacks, and powerfully documents the struggle for its own, takes up their battle cry and Eight MOVE members, Chuck Africa, carries on their work." initially targeted in the main against waged against Mumia's former attor­ Michael Davis Africa, Debbie Sims -James P. Cannon, "The Cause Muslims and Arabs, will ultimately be neys, who worked overtime to ensure That Passes Through a Prison" Africa, Janet Holloway Africa, Janine directed against organized labor was viv­ that this exculpatory evidence was never (September 1926), reprinted in Phillips Africa, Edward Goodman idly demonstrated by the government's introduced in court. Notebook of an Agitator Africa, Delbert Orr Africa and William (Pathfinder Press, 1958) use of a Taft-Hartley injunction against Last December, a federal court over­ Phillips Africa, are in their 25th year in In this spirit of class solidarity, evoked the ILWU longshore workers. turned Jamal's death sentence while prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 by the founder and early leader of the All this underscores that opposition affirming the conviction, condemning years after the 1978 police attack on their International Labor Defense, the Partisan to U.S. imperialist military adventures Jamal to life in prison. This ruling is being Philadelphia home, falsely convicted of Defense Committee is launching its 17th must be linked to defense of the interests challenged by the prosecution. Jamal's killing a police officer. The PCRA peti­ annual Holiday Appeal fund drive to of workers and the oppressed in the U.S. new legal team has filed appeals against tion to overturn their frame-ups was help maintain our program of monthly It was with this understanding that in the refusal of both federal and Pennsylva­ denied last year. stipends for 16 class-war prisoners and San Francisco last February, the PDC and nia state courts to even consider Beverly's testimony. This December marks 21 years Jamal Hart, Mumia's son, was sen­ of Mumia's imprisonment. The PDC calls tenced in 1998 to 15V2 years on bogus on working people, minorities, youth and firearm possession charges, targeted for Internal Struggle in the all opponents of racist capitalist oppres­ his prominent activism in the campaign Leninist Party sion to raise the cry: Freedom Now for to free his father. Although Hart was ini­ tially charged under Pennsylvania laws, Writing in 1932, as factional tunnoil Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! which would have meant a probationary racked the Communist League of America, sentence, Clinton's Justice Department Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon underlined Jerry Dale Lowe, United Mine Work­ ers member framed up on federal charges intervened to have Hart thrown in prison. the crucial importance of internal political He is not eligible for parole. Hart is at struggle for the education and steeling of the in the July 1993 shooting death of a scab Fairton, NJ. membership of a Leninist vanguard party. The contractor in Logan County, West Vir­ CIA was part of Leon Trotsky's International ginia. The scab was part of a convoy leav­ Left Opposition, which fought the Stalinist ing the mine, shot in the back of the head from the direction of the bosses' thugs. TROTSKY degeneration of the Third International, at LENIN that time as an expelled faction of that body. Lowe was singled out by authorities because he was a mili.tant defender of the What is the primary purpose of a discussion in a communist organization? It is not to picket line. For the "crime" of defending discredit one another, not to exalt some and push others down, not to present matters as his union, Lowe was sent~nced to nearly prosecution on the one side and defense on the other. No, the primary purpose is to eleven years in jail in AshlaQd, Kentucky clarify the principled questions, to educate the comrades on the meaning of the dis­ with no possibility of parole. Last year, pute of the moment, to teach them to penetrate the essence of a question and draw their his appeal based on new ballistics evi­ inferences accordingly, so that the lessons are firmly gained and remembered for dence was turned down in federal court. the future, when similar problems will arise in different forms. In other words, the pri­ Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe mary aim of a discussion conducted by communist leaders is to teach the comrades Mondo Eyen we Langa, former Black WV Photo to think and to fight politically, to grasp thtf main aspects of a question, to go by prin­ Panther supporters and leaders of the Jerry Dale Lowe ciple and not to be sidetracked by incidental matters. The acquisition of this method is Omaha Nebraska Committee to Combat the condition sine qua non for our comrades to fulfill their mission. as the vanguard of Fascism. Victims of racist FBI COIN­ Contribute Now! All proceeds from the vanguard, not only in future disputes within the ranks of the Left Opposition, but TELPRO operation, framed up for an the Holiday Appeal will go to the Class­ also, and especially, in conflicts with the other party factions, and beyond that in the explosion in 1970 which killed a cop. War Prisoners Stipend Fund. Send your broad class struggle and in the general labor movement, where they will encounter all Both were convicted on the basis of per­ contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, kinds of demagogues who are masters of all kinds of tricks. jured testimony, sentenced to life and Canal St. Station, New York, NY 10013; -James P. Cannon, "Draft on the Internal Struggle," July 1932, printed in have now spent more than 30 years (212) 406-4252. Writings and Speeches: The Communist League of America 1932-34 (1985) apiece in jail. Nebraska Board of Par­ The PDC is a class-struggle, non­ dons refuses to lessen sentences so that sectarian legal and social defense organ­ they can be considered for parole. Poin­ ization that champions cases and causes dexter is at Lino Lake, MN and Mondo in the interests of the whole of the work­ is at Lincoln, NE. ing people. This purpose is in accor­ Jaan Laaman and Ray Luc Levas­ dance with the political views of the !~!!!I!!Y1!.4p.'!l!!!~l!.! ~ seur were arrested in 1984 and '85 as part Spartacist League .• EDITOR: Alan Wilde EDITOR, YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Michael Davisson E8e"ellt 10' CII/II-WI/, P,llo"e'l ...... , PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller CIRCULATION MANAGER: Irene Gardner Organize for Jamal's Freedom EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Jon Brule, Karen Cole, Paul Cone, George Foster, Liz Gordon, Walter Jennings, Jane Kerrigan, Len Meyers, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer IiN~wIIIIIIJl'······ ······B.yl~'"r ... ·· The Spartacist League is the U.S, Section of the International Communist League Friday, December 6 Sunday, December 8 Sunday, December 8 (Fourth Internationalist), 6 to 10 p.m. 3 to 7 p.m. 1 to 4 p.m. Workers Vanguard (ISSN 0276·0746) published biweekly, except skipping three alternate issues in June, July and August (beginning with omitting the second issue in June) and with a 3-week interval in December, by the Spartacist 6 Harrison St., Manhattan United Electrical-Hall Centro del Pueblo Publishing Co" 299 Broadway, Suite 318, New York, NY 10007, Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 (Take 1 or 9 to Franklin SI.) 37 S, Ashland (at Monroe) 474 Valencia, San Francisco (Business), Address all 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 For more information: For more information: For more information: changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116, (212) 406-4252 (312) 563-0442 (510) 839-0852 Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. P.O, Box 99, Canal St Sta. P.O, Box 802867 P.O, Box 77462 The closing date for news in this issue is 12 November. New York, NY 10013 Chicago, IL 60680 San FranCiSCO, ~A 94107

No. 791 15 November 2002 SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Young Sparlaeus -Full Democratic Rights for Gays!­ Transgender Youth Murdered in Brutal Attack On October 3, 17-year-old Gwen about Matthew Shepard's murder, at lines, arrests prostitutes on the streets, Araujo, a Latina trans gender woman Newark Memorial High School, which terrorizes blacks and Latinos in the ghet­ whose birth name was Eddie, was sav­ Gwen had at:tended, and Bishop O'Dowd tos and denies gays their civil rights, agely beaten and strangled with a rope High School in Oakland on the weekend while protecting fascist ,scum from anti­ after attending a party in Newark, Cali­ of November 15. When Phelps and his fascist demonstrators. If implemented, fornia. Her body was found almost two filthy handful of followers came to San such laws would only give cops and the weeks later buried in a shallow grave Francisco in 1994 to picket and disrupt the courts added power for increased repres­ 150 miles away in the Sierra Nevada memorial of Randy Shilts, a gay reporter sion again~t minority communities and foothills. Three men, ages 19 to 24, have and writer who had died of AIDS, a Spar­ those they deem enemies by allowing the been arraigned and await trial for murder. tacist contingent joined hundreds of angry racist state to pass judgment on what is Youth around California have been mobi­ counter-protesters in routing these vile and is not motivated by "hate." lizing to protest the hideous attack and anti-gay bigots, making them run for Bigotry against gays and trans genders Gwen Araujo (with niece), trans­ show their support for gay rights, from cover like cockroaches exposed to light. is not just a matter of personal values or gender youth murdered by anti-gay demonstrations in the Bay Area at schools Phelps is not just a nut case, but is lack of education about "differences." It bigots. like Berkeley High to Los Angeles, where one of the shock troops of right-wing flows from the entrenched gender roles a multiethnic crowd of about 60 people, reaction, seeking to exterminate gays and decreed by the sexual division of labor their own, which means breaking away mostly transgender youth, marched in drive women back into the home. His in the family-the root of the oppression from religious obscurantism, male chau­ honor of Gwen Araujo on November 3. anti-gay filth is an incitement to murder, of women in class society-and is rein­ vinism and anti-gay bigotry, which only Araujo's lynching comes four years just as the bible-thumping, anti-woman, forced by religious moral codes. The cap­ serve the bourgeoisie. after gay Wyoming student Matthew anti-abortion reactionaries incite terror­ italist order is built upon private property When in 1982 the Nazis wanted to Shepard was left to die following a sadis­ ist attacks against abortion clinics and and the class domination of the capital­ march on Gay Pride Day in Chicago, the tic attack that provoked protests around the murder of the increasingly few doc­ ists over workers and all the oppressed. Spartacist League initiated a united-front the country and abroad. Far from isolated tors who perform the operations. It is no Capitalist society needs the family, a bed­ laborlblack mobilization which drew sup­ incidents, these cases are the demented coincidence that the KKK fascists attack rock conservatizing force and the mecha­ port from dozens of trade unions and and concentrated expression of the big­ both blacks and gays, as well as union nism by which private property is passed black, Latino, Jewish, gay, student and otry faced by gays, lesbians, bisexuals militants and Jews. These bigots go after down and a new generation of workers leftist organizations. Although the Nazis and transgenders in this brutal capital­ those they perceive as deviating from raised, and so it cannot ultimately "legit­ thought that no one would try to stop an ist society. Transgenders are particular­ their retrograde model of human society. imize" those who fundamentally deviate attack on a vulnerable section of the pop­ ly vulnerable given that the difference At a November 8 candlelight vigil for from its restrictions, not least gays and ulation, 3,000 people came out to stop between their chosen gender identity and Gwen at Newark Memorial High School, transgenders. them. This demonstration was an exam­ their biological one could be visibly rec­ religiosity dominated the crowd as priests While we fight for an end to all laws ple of the kind of action that would be ognized. So far this year, 25 trans gender and other members of the church passed that oppress gays and others deemed undertaken by a revolutionary vanguard people have been killed, according to the out candles and held signs that read, "God "deviant" by the American bourgeoisie's party of the proletariat acting as the "trib­ National Transgender Advocacy Coali­ Loves Everybody." But religious back­ Christian anti-sex moralism, we recog­ une of the people," like the Bolshevik tion. Since 1990, 38 transgenders have wardness is one of the central moral props nize that it will take a more fundamental Party of Lenin and Trotsky. We need a been murdered in California alone. In for the oppression of gays in capitalist transformation to change deeply rooted proletarian revolution to sweep away the 1999, Alina Marie Barragan was stran­ society. Furthermore, government en­ attitudes toward sex roles and sexuality. system that spawned the bigotry of the gled to death in San Jose after a man forcement and promotion of "family val­ A socialist revolution is necessary to lay depraved killers of Gwen Araujo, Mat­ found out she was biologically male. In ues" moralism gives reactionaries a green the basis for replacing the family and thew Shepard and all the countless other 1993, Brandon Teena, a biological female light for carrying out terrorist murders and creating a society in which all individuals victims of reactionary and fascistic terror. who lived as a male, was kidnapped, attacks against gays and trans genders. are free to fully express themselves. We We in the Spartacus Youth Clubs seek to raped and murdered in Nebraska, a case It is a real measure of the reactionary seek to win the working ciass to the win youth to the fight to build a party to made famous by the movie Boys Don't political climate in the U.S., fostered not understanding that workers must take up lead the working class and all the Cry. least by Chr{stian fundamentalists, that the fight for gay and women's rights as oppressed to victory.• Newark, a conservative working-class the Democrats can posture as protectors town just north of San Jose, is not exactly of the rights of women and gays. Bill part of the mythical "liberal" Bay Area, . Clinton slashed welfare for millions of where more open social attitudes toward women and children, and under his pres­ sexuality are in fact restricted to areas of idency access to abor.tion for poor and San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. rural women actually decreased. He en­ But even in the so-called gay haven of acted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy BAY AREA BOSTON San Francisco's Castro district, gays and which ushered in a widespread anti-gay Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Alternate Thursdays, 7 p.m. others are targeted by fascist scum and witchhunt in the military. Clinton also November 19: Women's Liberation November 21: anti-gay bigots. According to Commu­ signed the Defense of Marriage Act, Through Socialist Revolution. Lenin and the Vanguard Party nity United Against Violence, a group which enshrined marriage as the union On the Special Oppression of Boston University that monitors anti-gay violence, in 2001 between one man and one woman and Women under Capitalism CAS Room 237 there were over 300 anti-gay attacks in blocked access to federal benefits for gay UC Berkeley, 246 Dwinelle Hall 725 Commonwealth Ave. San Francisco alone. Meanwhile in West partners indefinitely. Information and readings: (510) 839-0851 Information and readings: (617) 666-9453 Hollywood, a heavily gay town in the Los This whole "family values" reaction or e-mail [email protected] or e-mail [email protected] Angeles area, a spate of assaults on gays is aimed at regulating sexual activities since September has put the gay commu­ for all, especially youth. From the dan­ CHICAGO NEW YORK CITY nity on high alert. At least five gay men gerous state-sponsored "abstinence only" Tuesday, November 26, 6 p.m. Tuesday, November 19, 7 p.m. have been attacked with bats, metal poles campaigns to the rollback of abortion Finish the Civil War! Black Liberation and knives on the streets. rights, the capitalist rulers are intent on Defend China, North Korea, Cuba Through Socialist Revolution! and Vietnam against Imperialist Following the news of Gwen Araujo's regimenting youth and the popul~tion at University of Illinois at Chicago Attack and Counterrevolution! murder, evil-incarnate Reverend Fred large. The guiding principle for sexual Room 117 Lincoln Hall For Workers Political Revolution! Phelps and his disgusting Kansas-based relationships between all people must 707 S. Morgan St. Columbia University Westboro Baptist Church cohorts threat­ be one of effective consent. Government Information and readings: (312) 563-0441 Hamilton Hall, Room 609 ened to picket her memorial in Newark, out of the bedroom! Down with reaction­ or e-mail [email protected] (116th and Broadway) just as they did at Matthew Shepard's ary "age of consent" laws! For full demo­ Information and readings: (212) 267-1025 funeral four years earlier with signs read­ cratic rights for gays! LOS ANGELES or e-mail [email protected] ing "God Hates Fags." Nearly 1,000 youth Groups around the nation have been and gay rights activists came to support calling for the expansion of existing "hate Saturday, November 23, 2 p.m. Araujo's family and protest this provoca­ crimes" laws to prevent further murder­ The 1917 Russian Revolution: How tion; although Phelps did not show up ous attacks. This strategy disarms the vic­ the Working Class Took Power at the funeral, he and his ilk picketed in - tims by fostering illusions that the capi­ 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 front of Araujo's house. Phelps has now talist state will somehow bring justice (Vermont/Beverly Red Line station) Information and readings: (213) 380-8239 announced he will picket performances to those it oppresses. This is the same or e-mail [email protected] of The Laramie Project, the powerful play state that sends cops to smash picket 15 NOVEMBER 2002 3 Dog Days James P. Cannon vs. Max Shachtman in the Communist League of America, 1931-1933 The Prometheus Research unlike in 1939-40, there was no Library (PRL), archive and cen­ decisive principled or program­ trallibrary of the Central Com­ matic difference. Trotsky inter­ mittee of the Spartacist League, vened sharply in the spring of is proud to announce the publi­ 1933, warning that the two cation of its third book, Dog sides "anticipate a lot by sharp­ Days: James P Cannon vs. Max ening the organizational strug­ Shachtman in the Communist gle between the groups and the League ofAmerica, 1931 -1933. members without any connec­ This 752-page volume, avail­ tion with the development of able in both paperback and political work and the ques­ hardcover, includes 118 doc­ tions it raises." He sought to get uments that chronicle a fac­ the two factions to dissolve so tional polariLation which rent that their members could direct the American section of Leon their energy into expanding the Trotsky's International Left Op­ League's mass work. Trotsky's position (lLO) from 1931 to intervention coincided with an 1933. This was a period of stag­ upturn in the class struggle in nation that Cannon later aptly 1933-34, which provided the called the "dog days of the objective basis for the CLA to movement." Pitting supporters break out of the impasse and of James P. Cannon against the go forward. generally younger followers of Max Shachtman, who were less Prelude to 1939-40 experienced as workers' lead­ Tamiment Library Faction Fight ers, the fight in the Communist CLA contingent in May Day demonstration, New York City, 1934. In his History of American League (CLA) presaged the Trotskyism (1944), Cannon cor­ defining split in American Trotskyism which occurred in establish the Workers Party, developing the view that the rectly called the CLA dispute "the premature rehearsal 1939-40. Yet the 1931-33 struggle has never before been USSR was a new form of class society, "bureaucratic of the great, definitive struggle of 1939-40." At the same well documented. collectivist." For a period, Shachtman's organization time, he described only a "sea of petty troubles, jealous­ The PRL's new volume, which includes an exhaustive claimed to adhere to the Fourth International (FI) and ies, clique formations and internal fights." The extent introduction that situates the CLA fight in the context of acted as a rival to the SWP, the PI section in the U.S. of the polarization was later downplayed or dismissed the political sorting out that occurred in the early ILO, But under the impact of the Cold War, the Workers Party by many of the leading participants interviewed by the sheds new light on the history of the Trotskyist move­ moved rapidly to the right and changed its name to PRL in the 1970s and 1990s. Some of the old-timers ment. It also provides a lively picture of the membership the Independent Socialist League (ISL) in 1949. In 1958 were embarrassed by their positions in the early fight. and work of the Trotskyists during this early period, the ISL liquidated into the pathetic dregs of American (For example, Carl Cowl, later a follower of the ultra­ documenting the political and organizational growth of a social democracy. By the 1960s, Shachtman was sup­ leftist Hugo Oehler, supported Shachtman in the CLA, small, fighting propaganda group which went on to lead porting the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba a fact which he never mentioned when the PRL inter­ one of the decisive American class battles of 1934-the and U.S. imperialism's bloody war against the Viet­ viewed him.) great Minneapolis Teamsters strikes. namese national and social revolution. His path of The exception was Albert Glotzer, a key leader of the In the book's Editorial Note, the genesis of the volume renegacy has been well chronicled by the Spartacist Shachtman group, whose memory was fueled by anti­ is explained: "In the political youth of James Robertson, tendency, most recently in "The Bankruptcy of 'New Cannon passions which burned as hot in later decades co-editor of this compilation, the subject matter of this Class' Theories-Tony Cliff and Max Shachtman: Pro­ as they had in the early 1930s. By the time the PRL book had a somewhat mystical and mythical quality, Imperialist Accomplices of Counterrevolution" (Sparta., interviewed him in the early 1990s, Glotzer was a con- wherein might be found the origins of the profound 1940 cist [English-language edition] No. 55, Autumn 1999). . firmed "State Department socialist" with ties to the scission in the Trotskyist (i.e., the authentic communist) Cannon remained National Secretary of the Socialist imperialist secret services. (Richard Valcourt, editor of movement." In 1939-40, Max Shachtman and his sup­ Workers Party until he retired in 1953. He was then the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter­ porters departed decisively from a revolutionary pro­ SWP National Chairman until his death in 1974. But by Intelligence, spoke at his 1999 memorial meeting.) Yet letarian and internationalist perspective, abandoning the late 1950s, the party began to succumb to the conse­ Glotzer obscenely continued to insist that Cannon had the unconditional military defense of the world's first quences of the Cold War anti-Communist witchhunt, never been a true Bolshevik! The PRL introduction to workers state, the Soviet Union. Cannon and Trotsky led including lack of recruitment and an aging cadre. By Dog Days makes use of the PRL's interviews with for­ a six-month-long struggle against Shachtinan's petty­ 1960, the party had given up on the struggle for revolu­ mer CLAers, as well as of interviews with Cannon and bourgeois opposition, which composed some 40 percent tionary proletarian leadership, hailing Fidel Castro as an Shachtman conducted by others in the 1960s and 1970s. of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)-then the U.S. "unconscious Trotskyist" and tailing the liberal-pacifist In 1939-40, the factional lineup among SWP National Trotskyist organization-and its youth organization. leadership of the civil rights movement. The Revolu­ Committee members who had been part of the early The fight coincided with the outbreak of World War tionary Tendency, forerunner of the Spartacist League, CLA was almost identical to that of 1931-33. Shacht­ II, and many of the European Trotskyist organiza­ fought the party's degeneration and was expelled from man, Martin Abern and Glotzer were pitted against tions were functioning in conditions of illegality. The the SWP in 1963. The SL today stands on the heritage of Cannon, Vincent Dunne and Carl Skoglund. (The one fight in the SWP "became in effect a dIscussion for the Cannon's revolutionary SWP, which has less than noth­ exception was Morris Lewit-later known as Morris entire Fourth International and was followed with pas­ ing to do with the increasingly quirky reformist sect Stein-who supported Shachtman in the early fight but sionate interest by the members of all sections" (Fourth around Jack Barnes that today calls itself the Socialist became a key collaborator of Cannon's in 1934 and International, May 1940). Trotsky's writings from the Workers Party. a stalwart of the Soviet defensists in 1939-40.) The struggle were collected in In Defense of Marxism; The material published in Dog Days documents that magnum opus of the Shachtman side, the lengthy June Cannon's were published in The Struggle for a Proletar­ there was a deepgoing polarization between support­ 1932 "The Situation in the American Opposition: Pros­ ian Party. ers of Shachtman and those of Cannon already in the pect and Retrospect" (referred to hereafter as "Prospect Shachtman and some of his supporters went on to CLA, posing the possibility of a split in early 1933. But and Retrospect"), harps on the same organizational themes of Cannon's so-called "bureaucratic conserva­ JJ tism" that dominated the petty-bourgeois opposition in cj A :::T 1939-40. When Cannon sent his Struggle for a Proletar­ 5 z ian Party to Trotsky in 1940, he noted, "Its length must be excused on the ground that the dam of ten years patience has been broken down." "Prospect and Retrospect," signed by Shachtman, Abern and Glotzer, is the source of all subsequent Left: James P. Cannon accounts of Cannon as an unreformed Zinovievist and and Red Army soldiers bureaucrat with little interest in Marxist theory or inter­ at time of Comintern national questions. Submitted just before a June 1932 Sixth Congress, 1928. plenum of the CLA's National Committee (NC), "Pros­ Max Shachtman, pect and Retrospect" was withdrawn by its authors at the Berlin, 1930. plenum and then resubmitted a month later: Carbon cop­ ies of the document circulated extensively in the CLA through private factional channels, but "Prospect and Retrospect" never appeared in the CLA Internal Bulletin 4 WORKERS VANGUARD because Cannon never completed the reply he was man­ Destroying the Shachtmanite myth that Cannon was has the power and the interest to overthrow this decay­ dated to write by the National Committee majority. In simply a "hand-raiser for Trotsky," this volume illus­ ing social order and to replace it with an internation­ Dog Days: James P. Cannon vs. Max Shachtman in the trates that the relationship between Trotsky and Cannon ally planned economy. The leap in development that Communist League of America, 1931-1933, "Prospect was forged over time-not least in fights against comes with a planned economy-even a bureaucrati­ and Retrospect" is published for the first time. Shachtman. Dog Days is a kind of manual of the dos cally deformed and nationally limited one-has been The new volume draws together representative docu­ and don'ts of Leninist internal party struggle. As the made patently obvious by the devastation of infrastruc­ ments, motions and correspondence from both sides of PRL introduction notes: ture, industry, education and health that have accompa­ the factional divide, as well as all of Trotsky's correspon­ "The documents reveal the myriad tensions that can tear nied capitalist counterrevolution in the old Soviet Union dence and interventions into the CLA fight. But it does apart a small communist propaganda nucleus. How the and East Europe. Future generations of proletarian revo­ not reproduce Cannon's major documents and factional CLA overcame the 'dog days' to become one of the lutionaries will need to assimilate the indispensable leg­ strongest sections of the Fourth International is an impor­ correspondence, most of which were published by Path­ tant lesson in the struggle to forge a revolutionary party acy of the Russian Revolution. They will find much to finder Press in 1985 as part of Cannon's Writings and and its cadre. The Prometheus Research Library, central instruct them in the pages of the PRL's new volume. It Speeches: The Communist League of America 1932-34. reference archive of the Central Committee of the Sparta­ is unfortunate that this book presently appears only in That volume includes Cannon's partial, draft reply to cist League, U.S. section of the International Communist English. "Prospect and Retrospect" as well as "Internal Problems League, is unique in understanding the importance of the CLA fight and making its history accessible to our own The Impasse of the CLA of the CLA," which Cannon co-authored with Arne Swa­ and future generations. The ICL, like the ILO, is a fighting beck in March 1932. Cannon's 1932-34 Writings and communist propaganda group with the goal of forging The American Trotskyist movement was founded in Speeches is an essential companion to the PRL's new parties of the proletarian vanguard to lead to victory new October 1928 when Cannon, Abern and Shachtman were book; Pathfinder's earlier volume, Cannon's Writings October Revolutions internationally." expelled from the Communist Party (CP) for attempting and Speeches: The Left Opposition in the u.S. 1928-31, It is not a propitious time to bring out a specialized to organize support for Leon Trotsky'S Left Opposition. also provides important background information and and detailed volume of communist history such as this. Born in struggle against the Stalinist bureaucratic caste, context. Dog Days includes eight Cannon pieces not in Interest in the history of revolutionary Marxism is cur­ the Left Opposition fought, in both the Soviet party and the Pathfinder collection, all of which circulated in the rently at a low ebb as bourgeois ideologues continue to the Communist International (CI) as a whole, to continue minutes of the CLA's leading committee resident in New peddle "death of communism" triumphalism born out of Lenin's fight for international working-class revolution, York and in Internal Bulletins. Most of Trotsky's written interventions into the CLA fight were published in English as part of Pathfinder's Writings of Leon Trotsky series. But they are spread over several volumes, and the bulk of them appears only in the Writings Supplement 1929-33. Dog Days gathers them together in one book for the first time, putting them in the context of the CLA's internal disputes so that their full import is clear. The new volume also includes seve!! never-before-published letters by Trot­ sky, most of them from the section of the Trotsky papers at Harvard University covering his period in exile. This section was opened to the public only in 1980, after Pathfinder's Trotsky Writings series was compiled. Trot­ sky had no English-speaking secretary at the time of the CLA dispute, so most of his letters were written in Ger­ man, and a few in French and Russian. The PRL pre­ pared new translations for Dog Days. Dog Days includes letters and documents by many other CLA cadres, including Arne Swabeck, Carl Skoglund, Albert Glotzer, Martin Abern and Maurice Spector. PRL researchers searched the papers of leading From left: Martin Abern, Vincent R. Dunne, Carl Skoglund, Maurice Spector, Arne CLAers in archives around the United States, unearthing Swabeck, Max Shachtman, all full members of 1931-34 CLA National Committee. Full in all some 600 items relating to the CLA dispute and members not pictured: James P. Cannon, Albert Glotzer, Hugo Oehler. the preceding organizational tensions and disputes on international questions. The 118 documents selected for the demise of the Soviet Union. But it was Stalinism against Stalin's revisionist insistence on building "social­ the book give a representative picture of the faction fight that died when Stalin's epigones gave the USSR back to ism in one country." Cannon was won to the Left Oppo­ as it unfolded. Short introductions by the editors give the capitalist world economy in 1991-92, not commu­ sition in 1928 while attending the Communist Interna­ necessary background material. Extensive footnotes pro­ nism. A crystallizing bureaucratic caste under Stalin tional's Sixth Congress in Moscow, where he read the vide additional information and a 40-page glossary usurped political power from the Soviet working class two parts of Trotsky's Critique of the Comintern's draft identifies people, institutions and publications that in early 1924. In the aftermath, the Stalinist propaganda program that were distributed to members of the Program might be unfamiliar to the reader. There are 16 pages machine at the top of the world's first workers state per­ Commission. (The whole of the Critique, which consists of photos-many never before published-of leading verted Marxism. To justify its policies, which oscillated of three parts, was later published as The Third Interna­ CLAers and the class-struggle events in which the between abject conciliation of imperialism and stupid tional After Lenin.) Cannon and Canadian Communist Trotskyists participated, as well as reproductions of the adventurism, the Stalinist caste insisted that it was pos­ Party leader Maurice Spector, also a member of the Pro­ organization's pUblications. The volume contains an sible to build "socialism in one country" and to peace­ gram Commission, smuggled a copy of Trotsky'S manu­ extensive index, and the paperback as well as the hard­ fully "co-exist" with imperialism. These dogmas belong script out of the Soviet Union and began organizing sup­ cover have durable smyth-sewn bindings. on the garbage heap of history; they have nothing to do port for the Left Opposition in their respective parties. The documents in Dog Days reveal just how pro­ with genuine Marxism, i.e., Trotskyism. . Working of necessity in great secrecy, Cannon man­ foundly Cannon was shaped by the CLA's early fac­ Whatever the fads and fancies of bourgeois social aged to win over only a very few of his compatriots tional struggle and especially Trotsky'S intervention, sciences, the dynamic of the class struggle is built into -centrally his companion, Rose Karsner, as well as which completed Cannon's education as a Leninist. the nature of the capitalist economy. The working class continued on page 6 •

James P. Cannon vs. • 118 documents including letters by Trotsky • 16 pages of historical photographs and Max Shachtman on international issues, some published graphics, some previously unavailable or in the Communist League here for the first time. never before published. of~erlca,1931-1933 • Extensively documented introduction and • Glossary of more than 175 items. explanatory notes • IS-page, fully cross-referenced index.

,~~~~~~~~~------~~-~~-~~------~-----~------~-~-~-~-~~------~-~~~~~-~~~-~~-~~~--~--~-~~=~~=-~--~~-~-~~-~ , !, Please send: Mail to: i, , , , copies of Dog Days : :.• cloth at $30.00 each N arne ,: ! copies of Dog Days : : paper at $19.95 each Address ! " , ! Subtotal : : Apt. : l Shipping and handling (U.S. only) : : 1 book $4, 2·4 books $6 ! :' (Inquire for u.s, S/H on orders over c·tty , : 4 books and international S/H) : 'Subtotal : : State Zip: ! New York State residents add 8.25% : : sales tax to book price and S/H Order from/make checks payable to: i ' , : New Jersey residents add Spartacist Publishing Company : ' . . $30.00 cloth ISBN 0-9633828-7-X ! 6% sales tax to book pnce Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 : H ': $19.95 paper ISBN 0-9633828-8-8 : Total enclosed Contact us at: [email protected] : .t_~ ____ ~ ______----- ______~, 752 pages; smyth-sewn binding in paper and cloth.

15 NOVEMBER 2002 5 PRL Book ... (continued from page 5) L. Dc. TB GTS"" Shachtman and Abern-before being expelled from the CPo However, the fledgling Trotskyist group immedi­ ately began publishing a newspaper, the Militant, to propagate its views. The group quickly won adherents. Cannon had been the co-leader, along with William F. (Bill) Dunne, of the smallest of the three major groups that vied for leadership in the factional wars that domi­ nated the Communist Party in the 1920s. Cannon had a great deal of authority as a founding Communist with a history in t.he pre-communist workers movement, going back to his days as an itinerant organizer for the Indus­ trial Workers of the World in the 191Os. He was elected chairman of the Workers Party when it was founded in December 1921 as a legal organization parallel to the unde~ground Communist Party. While many members of the CP's Cannon faction-including Bill Dunne-went along with Cannon's expUlsion, many others opposed or at least questioned it. These questioners, too, were unceremoniously expelled by the CP leadership, which In 1929, CLA published the first two parts of Trotsky's 1928 Critique of draft program of Communist was at the time in the hands of an opportunist faction International. Trotsky (right) with (from left) Jan Frankel, son Leon Sedov, wife Natalya Sedova and led by the unprincipled, ambition-crazed adventurer Czechoslovakian Trotskyist Jiri Kopp in Prinkipo, Turkey, 1930. Jay Lovestone (who later evolved into an imperialist secret service operative). After reading Trotsky's Cri­ in 1927-28. Stalin moved against the Soviet party right was "a devastating blow." In the early '60s, Shachtman tique, the majority of the expellees declared for the Left wing, led by Bukharin, which had advocated a series of recounted: Opposition and began distributing the Militant. The ILO economic concessions that were made to the well-off "We could no longer speak of the Party going further and considered itself an expelled faction of the Communist peasants who could hire labor (the kulaks) from 1925- further to the right. We could no longer speak of the Lovestoneites ruining the Party. We could no longer speak Party, fighting to return the Communist International to 28. Stalin and Bukharin had stood together in the fight of the Fosterites having illusions that they would get the the program embodied in its first four congresses. against the Left Opposition, but the conce~sions made to leadership of the Party. If anything resulted from that, it The Communist League of America, which initially the peasantry proved a horrible disaster (as the Left was a counteroffensive by the Fosterites-in the ranks, to included the Canadian comrades in a Toronto branch, had Opposition had predicted). By 1927 the kulaks were be sure, unofficially, to be sure-to get us to return to the some 100 members at its founding convention in May hoarding grain, threatening to starve the Soviet cities. Party. They didn't succeed in convincing a single one of our people, but not even the possibility of success existed 1929. The former Cannon faction members were joined In an abrupt about-face, Stalin moved to brutally and any longer for us in recruiting dissident Fosterites." by a handful of former adherents of the third CP faction, forcibly collectivize the peasantry and implement a Just a few months after Lovestone's expUlsion, the which was led by William Z. Foster. At the time the planned, but adventurous, rate of industrialization. At stock market crash inaugurated the Great Depression. Trotskyists were expelled, the Cannon and Foster fac­ the same time, the Comintern declared that a new The CLA sank into the dog days. Not only were the tions were in a bloc against the opportunist Lovestone "Third Period" of post-World War I political life had Trotskyists cut off from the vast majority of class­ leadership. Disgusted by the continued and sharpening opened up in which revolution was just around the cor­ conscious American workers organized in the Communist rightward course of the CP under Lovestone, disaffected ner. Bukharin and most of the leaders of the right in the Party, but the CLA's already meager financial resources Fosterites gave the fledgling Trotskyists a hearing and Soviet party soon capitulated to Stalin, but internation­ all but disappeared as its members were laid off or forced some were recruited. But this source of new members ally Bukharin's supporters were expelled from most to work for reduced wages. Class struggle in the country was soon cut off, as the Dog Days introduction recounts. communist parties. The Bukharinites congealed into an was at a low ebb. Moreover Cannon, whose first wife Lovestone, failing to accurately judge the winds blowing international Right Opposition which included the died just before the CLA was founded, leaving him from Moscow, did not break early enough with his main Lovestone group in the U.S. responsible for their two children, had to get a job out­ Moscow sponsor, Nikolai Bukharin. He was expelled The international tum toward "Third Period" ultraleft side the organization. He underwent a period of evident from the CP the same month the CLA was founded. rhetoric-which was often combined with adventurist demoralization, absenting himself from the CLA office Lovestone took his closest supporters with him, but Sta­ actions-assuaged many communists previously disaf­ for weeks at a time. The personal frictions and organiza­ lin had managed to isolate him from the vast majority of fected with the Comintern's growing opportunism. The tional grievances born in this period fueled the later fac­ his faction, which remained in the party. new policy further undercut the La's appeal by seem­ tion fight and dominate Shachtman, Abern and Glotzer's The expUlsion of Lovestone was part of a wholesale ing to co-opt its call for a more rapid pace of Soviet "Prospect and Retrospect." left tum in the policies of CI parties decreed by Moscow industrialization. In Cannon's words, the Third Period The Cannon Faction in the CP The PRL introduction to Dog Days deals extensively with the 1929-30 frictions. Some of the tension grew out of the fact that Cannon recognized early on that the Third Period had shut off the CLA's possibilities for immediate substantial growth. Shachtman and Abern resisted this conclusion, insisting on taking the Militant weekly in late 1929. Other tensions arose as the Ameri­ can Trotskyists avidly assimilated Trotsky's writings, realizing the depth of the political deficiencies of the old Prometheus Research Series Cannon faction in the Communist Party. Cannon No.1: Guidelines on the Organizational explained in a 1974 interview referenced in Dog Days: Structure of Communist Parties, on the "As we began to get the writings of Trotsky, it opened up a Methods and Content of Their Work whole new world for us. And they [Abem and Shacht­ man] discovered, this is my assumption, that while they Complete and accurate Englishtranslation of 1921 had always taken what I said for gospel, they discovered Comintern Resolution from final German text. there were a lot of things I didn't know. That I was just (August 1988) beginning to learn from Trotsky. What they didn't know $6 (includes shipping and handling) 94 pages was that I was learning as well as they were. Shachtman at No.2: Documents on the least; I think, had the idea that he had outgrown me." "Proletarian Military Policy" Shachtman, Abern and Glotzer took great exception to Includes materials from the Trotskyist movement in the Cannon's 1930 statement that the CLA's cadre had been U.S. and Europe during World War II. (February 1989) "'prepared by the past' for our place under the banner of $9 (includes shipping and handling) 102 pages the International Left Opposition" (Militant, 10 May No.3: In Memoriam, Richard S. Fraser: 1930). Labeling Cannon's assertion a "theory of gesta­ An Appreciation and Selection of tion," they disparaged the record of the Cannon faction His Work in the CP, insisting that their being won over to the Left A selection of the writings of comrade Richard S. Fraser Opposition was some kind of historical accident. (1913-1988), who pioneered the Trotskyist understand­ PRL Books The PRL's first book, James P. Cannon and the Early ing of black oppression in the United States. (August 1990) James P. Cannon and the Early Years of Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and $7 (includes shipping and handling) 108 pages American Communism: Selected Writings Speeches, 1920-1928, which was published in 1992, and Speeches, 1920-1928 covered Cannon's years as CP leader, documenting the No.4: Yugoslavia, East Europe and the This volume of Cannon's writings covers the period political evolution of the Cannon faction. The Cannon Fourth International: The Evolution when he was one of the principal leaders of the Ameri­ faction was motivated largely by national concerns and of Pabloist Liquidationism can section of the Communist International. (1992) did not break fundamentally with the Stalinist dogma of By Jan Norden. Covers the internal discussion within Paperback $14.50 (624 pages) ISBN 0-9633828-1-0 the Fourth International over its flawed response to the "socialism in one country." At the same time, the fac­ Shipping and handling within U.S.: $4. Inquire for tion's record proves that there was much in their world­ Yugoslav Revolution and the 1948 Tito-Stalin split. U.S. StH on multiple books and international StH. (March 1993) view that led them to the ILO's door. As the PRL noted $7 (includes shipping and handling) 70 pages The Communist International After Lenin in the introduction to James.P. Cannon and the Early First Russian-language edition (1993) Years of American Communism: No.5: Marxist Politics or Unprincipled By Leon Trotsky. Includes Trotsky's Critique of the 1928 Combinationism? Internal Problems "When, in 1932, Shachtman and Abern led a rebellion draft program of the Communist International. against Cannon's leadership of the Communist League of of the Workers Party Cloth bound $12 (includes shipping and handling) America, they were only interested in telling one side of Includes Max Shachtman's document from the 1936 (309 pages) ISBN 5-900696-01-4 the story. The material presented here also tells another, internal bulletin of the Workers Party of the U.S. For books only: one that predisposed a deliberate and considered workers' (September 2000) New York State residents add 8.25'", sales tax to book price and S/H. leader like Cannon to tum away from high office within $7 (includes shipping and handling) 88 pages New Jersey residents add 6'", sales tax to book price. the American party in favor of remaining true to the revo­ lutionism that had animated his youth and continued to Order from/make checks payable to: animate the program of the Left Opposition.''. Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 The introduction to Dog Days notes that in partic­ ular Shachtman et al. underplayed the importance of 6 WORKERS VANGUARD Cannon's history of hard opposition to the opportunism to create a centralized political and administrative appa­ Century," Humanities Press, 1994]. In fact, Trotsky'S of Lovestone, the American version of the Right Oppo­ ratus for the ILO. Trotsky'S aim was to forge a politi­ opponents in Europe invoked Shachtman's name in sition. Trotsky fought many battles in the early ILO cally homogenous democratic-centralist tendency, even defense of their own actions." against those, like Spanish Opposition leader Andres if it consisted at first of small propaganda groups. This Nin, who sought to merge banners with the Right Oppo­ aim, carried forward today by the ICL, separates us The Fight sition. It was a particular strength of the American from all manner of fakers who (used tolsort of) pretend After returning from his second trip to Europe, League that its members, in general, were not disposed to be the continuators of the Left Opposition. Shachtman refused to vote for Cannon's 1931 draft NC to make common cause with the Right Opposition. Trotsky fought against the Bordigists and others who statement supporting Trotsky'S positions in Europe. He The CLA's extensive publishing program was key to wanted the ILO center to be simply a political clearing resigned his post as Militant editor and attempted to the assimilation of its cadre into the international Trot­ house for nationally delimited (and therefore necessar­ deflect the discussion from the international questions skyist movement. Besides the weekly Militant, which ily centrist) parties. He fought for an early dele~ated by making an issue of Swabeck <:lnd Cannon's supposed often included articles by Trotsky, the CLA published an international conference to establish an elected leader­ harshness toward a supercilious and scholastic group array of Trotsky pamphlets, including his major articles ship, and he condemned the leadership of the Spanish of petty-bourgeois youth in the New York local (the on the rise of fascism in Germany and on the unfolding section in particular for not paying enough attention to "Carter group"). Abern and Glotzer, who claimed to dis­ revolutionary' situation in Spain. They also published in international questions and for not translating the ILO agree with Shachtman on the debates in Europe, aided book form a selection of Trotsky's writings on the lost discussion bulletins for its membership. The CLA, it and abetted Shachtman in deflecting the discussion, co­ opportunity for proletarian revolution in China from should be noted, took the responsibility early on for signing "Prospect and Retrospect" and submitting it on 1925 to 1927, Problems of the Chinese the eve of the June 1932 NC plenum. Revolution. In letters included in Dog The documents reveal that Spector Days, Trotsky praised the quality of the and Glotzer privately prevailed on CLA's translations and publishing Shachtman to capitulate on the inter­ efforts, and he sought to get the North iel)n T totoky national question, which he did at the American Trotskyists to produce a plenum. The two sides also managed theoretical journal (which they began PROBLEMS OF to work out ajoint motion on the New only in 1934). THE CHINESE York local and the "Carter group." In late 1930, leading CLA member REVOLUTION Under pressure from Cannon and his

Arne Swabeck moved from Chicago to VlAmerican Workers Party, who (continued from page 7) advocated the formation of a new work­ ers party in the U.S. Fusion between the Shachtman CLA and the Musteites took place in introduction notes, Cannon "was des­ and Cannon December 1934 and was greatly facili­ during 1934 perate to find an entry point into a mass tated by the CLA's leadership of three Teamsters strike proletarian movement and thus recruit a strikes in the spring and summer which way out of the factional impasse caused in Minneapolis, where both won union recognition for the Minneap­ by the political weight of the League's olis Teamsters, and by the Muste orga­ literary recruits." Cannon's younger were arrested. Pickets confront nization's leadership in a major class supporters like George Clarke and Sam scabherding battle at Toledo Auto-Lite in the spring. Gordon went out into the field as itin­ deputy in key It was the new opportunities opening erant party organizers. When Skoglund strike battle. up before the American Trotskyists that and Dunne .began their work organiz­ laid the basis for the resolution of the ing the coal drivers in Minneapolis, CLA's internal polarization. Shachtman Shachtman's supporter there, Carl Cowl, and Morris Lewit went on to collabo­ branded them as "opportunists." rate with Cannon in turning the League The. cavalier attitude of the Shachtman toward the class struggle, while the faction toward the CLA's fragile roots in majority of the old Shachtman fac­ the proletariat was amply demonstrated tion, now organized as the Abern-Weber by its periodic obstruction of the CLA's clique, obstructed the work. That story work in the Southern Illinois breakaway is told in Prometheus Research Series from the United Mine Workers, the Pro­ No.5, which reprints Shachtman's 1936 gressive Miners of America (PMA). For document "Marxist Politics or Unprin­ most of the period covered by the book, cipled Combinationism?", a devastating the CLA's best opportunity to recruit real indictment of the unprincipled, per­ working-class support appeared to lie sonalist methods of Shachtman's for­ with the PMA. A CLA member, Gerry mer supporters. In this document Shacht­ Allard, was the editor of the PMA paper, man reveals that-despite the May 1933 Progressive Miner. The PRL introduc­ agreement to dissolve the factions-the tion deals in detail with developments ShachtmanfAbernlGlotzer faction in New in the PMA, providing essential back­ York went on meeting through January ground for the reader. The volume in­ 1934. The Abern clique remained as cludes a never-before-published letter by a fault line in the American Trotskyist Cannon to Trotsky requesting advice on movement throughout the 1930s, one relations with Allard. that ruptured again in the 1939-40 strug­ Throughout the period of the greatest gle, when Shachtman rejoined it. organizational tensions, however, the two sides remained united on the League's Prescient and Equivocal fundamental political tasks. When Hitler Ruminating on the problems of party was appointed Chancellor of Germany in Minnesota Historical Society photos leadership as he was about to be sent to January 1933, the decision to take the Militant from CLA would be thoroughly discussed. Swabeck was prison along with 17 other SWP and Minneapolis Team- weekly to triweekly to champion the expected resistance scheduled to attend on his way home from Prinkipo, and sters leaders in 1943, Cannon drew a balance sheet of of the German working class was not controversial. Nei­ the I.S. requested that a minority representative also the CLA experience: ther did the two sides fight about the CLA's work in the attend. Drawing on funds lent by Mexican muralist "At one time in the early days, the so-called Cannon- unemployed movement. Diego Rivera, then a Trotskyist sympathizer, Shachtman S.hachtman fight, which w~s conducted with all .the inte~- once again went to Europe. On the boat to .Europe S!ty of the final str.uggle With th~ petty-b~mrgeOis OPPOSI- The polarization began to take on an embryonic polit­ . . . 'tlOn and even With more acnmony-m that struggle ical character only in early 1933, when Shachtman and Shachtman wrote to Glotzer, InSIStIng that he would not Comrade Trotsky made the comment that the two factions Abern objected strenuously to Cannon's raising the pos­ dissolve their faction. However, he quickly changed his each anticipated too much. They fought each other not on sibility of a role for the Soviet Red Army in a proletarian tune. In Paris he co signed a resolution with Swabeck the ground of the political merits and qualities whi.ch offensive to beat back Hitler's rise to power. Shachtman calling for dissolution of the factions and he traveled wer~ fully demonstr.ate~ as of that day, but ~rom a pomt ...... of view of a generahzatlOn as to what the ulttmate devel- and Abern were at the time capitulating to the prevailing on to Pnnklpo for dISCUSSIOns wIth !rotsky. HIS let- opment of the political tendencies on each side would "socialism in one country" opinion in the CP milieus to ters home to Abern and Glotzer-mimeographed for come to .... In such a situation, Comrade Trotsky said, the which the CLA oriented. The Shachtman faction's oppo­ distribution to his faction in the League-are included most progressive tendency is the conciliatory tendency- sition to posing the use of the Red Army outside the in the book. They amplify and elaborate on Trotsky's those who p~opose to. make pe~ce and te~t out in further thinking about the situation in the CLA. c.ommon actIOn. what IS the b~sls and ment of the accusa- borders of the USSR presaged their 1939 abandonment .. .. ttons on each Side. That adVIce of Comrade Trotsky was of the defense of the USSR when the Red Army entered The C~A NatIOnal Co~mlttee ad?pted a resolutIOn In accepted in the old fight. Some people accepted it diplo- Finland and Poland. But in 1933 they dropped their June calhng for the cessatIOn of the Internal struggle and matically and some honestly, but, in general, the prescrip- objections after Trotsky intervened to support the thrust for turning the League outward to take advantage of t!on was to plu~ge the party in~o mass w?rk, stop the fac- of Cannon's position. Trotsky's statement on this dis­ new opportunities opening up before it. The campaign tton. strug.g~e, dIs~and the factIOn orgamzat~ons, and test C 't d f t k' I "". . H' 1 out m pohttcal actIOn what were the tendenCIeS of the two pute, "Germany and the USSR," has long been available ~or a um e - ron wor Ing-~ ass OuenSIve agaInst It er groups. as part of Pathfinder's Trotsky collection, The Struggle In Germany had .a stron? . Impact on the CP cadre and "And eventually we came to a solution of it in the year Against Fascism in Germany. But its import is much the CLA was agaIn recruItIng from the party. It was able 1940-but the fight had begun ten years before, and if we clearer when it is read along with the documents from to intervene to great effect in conferences called by the had tried to solve it in 1933 .by mea~s of a spli.t-which is the CLA fight. CP of the unemployed movement and legal defense the on.ly way you can solve IITeco~cIlable factIOn fights-:- . . there IS no way the movement mIght have profited by It, At the time of the Red Army dispute, Shachtman and orgamzatIons. " because we would have had to explain to the workers out- Abern labeled Cannon an opportunist because he deliv­ . Yet the documents reveal that tenSIOns contInued to side the movement what the fight was about. And if we ered a speech to a trade-union conference in Southern run high over Cannon's proposal to move the CLA couldn't make this clear to comrades inside the party how Illinois-in which the PMA was heavily involved-as a headquarters to Chicago. Aiming to take advantage of c0':ll~ ~e make it clear to the nonparty people ~e wanted the proletarian nature of the city (as compared to New to Jom. The result would ~ave been the stagnatIOn of the representative of a group of left-wing workers in New . . .. movement as was the case m England." York instead of as a member of the CLA. But political York) and the greater openness of CP mIlIeus In ChI- -Cannon, "The Situation in the New York Local," groups had been banned from speaking at the confer­ cago, Cannon's proposal was eventually supported by 23 December 1942, printed in The Socialist ence, and the alternative would have been to cede the Trotsky, who saw it as part of turning the CLA outward Workers Party in World War II: Writings and field to reformist and anti-Communist PMA leaders. toward the working class. While not campaigning ~peeches 1940-43 .. . Trotsky'S comments on the CLA's work in the PMA­ against the move, Shachtman and Abern quietly planned On questIons of party orgamzatIOn and attItude centrally "Trade-Union Problems in America" (previ­ to remain in New York and produce a theoretical jour- toward. workers struggle, the 1931-.33 Shachtman faction ously published in Writings of Leon Trotsky Supplement nal. This was a recipe for a "cold split" in the CLA, and embodIed the same petty-b~urge01s app~oach that Can- 1929-33)-have a much bigger impact when read in the in late 1933 Cannon wisely shelved the idea of moving non exposed s.o eloquently In 1939-~? In The .Struggle context of documents from both sides of the CLA the organization's center. This aspect of the fight has for a Proletanan Party. But the declSlve questIOn for a divide. "Trade-Union Problems in America" is pub­ never before been dealt with in print. Leninist is political program. The petty-bourgeois orien- lished in the new volume's final section, "The Interna­ Hard on the heels of the international attempts to t~tion of Shacht~an, Aber~ an? Glotzer took o~ deci- tional Intervenes." mitigate the CLA struggle came Trotsky'S initiative for Slve program~atIc colora~IOn III 1939-40, and It was a bold political turn for the ILO as a whole. Already only at that POInt that factIOnal struggle was mandated. Trotsky's Role in May 1933 Trotsky had noted that the German Com- Cannon learned from Trotsky's intervention into the early In many ways, "The International Intervenes" is the munist Party's failure to organize any opposition to ~t':llggle, an? he went on to prove himself a superb Len- most powerful section of the book. Trotsky's experience Hitler's consolidation of power meant that it was dead Im~t l~ad~r In the 1939-40 fight an~ beyond. He. won the in internal party struggle was brought to bear, first in as a revolutionary force. He called for a new party in ~aJonty In 1940 because the ~mencan Trotsk~Ists, hav- discussions with Swabeck in Prinkipo and later in his Germany and in Jul)\ 1933, after it was clear that no Ing t~rned outw~rd, ~ad recruIted a .layer of ~enous, pro- letters to CLA leaders on both sides of the factional organized opposition had emerged within the Commu- letan.an revolutIOnanes. The P~L Intro.ductIOn ends by divide. In addition to Trotsky's correspondence, the nist International as a whole, he proposed that the ILO dra~,Ing .the centrall~sson of thIS expenence: . section includes letters written by Swabeck to Cannon reorient itself away from acting as a faction of the CI. . W~Ile .the revolutlO~ary character ~f a proletanan org~n- IzatlOn IS defined by ItS program, whIch represents nothmg reporting on further discussions in Prinkipo. Criticizing Trotsky advocated the call for a new, Fourth Interna- other than the historic interests of the international work- both factions for drawing harsh organizational lines tional and suggested that the Opposition attempt to ing class, there is an interplay between a party's pro- in the absence of programmatic differences, Trotsky regroup with subjectively revolutionary elements who gram and its social composition. Marx insisted that 'being pointed out that the Cannon group, as the majority of the were now organizing outside the CI. The new orienta- det~r~ines con~ciou~ness,' and this applies as m~ch to tion was endorsed by an I.S. plenum in August 1933 and aspIfI.ng revolutlOna.nes as to other s~ctors of sAfghanistan, is bad, peace is good." For WWP's the Balkans and Iraq and occupied Haiti ANSWER coalition, the October 26 pro­ and Somalia, among others. Left-liberals test organizers, and the other reformists, like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky the amorphous liberal demos represented are popular for exposing U.S. war crimes Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League an opportunity to harness this broad and telling the sordid history of the moral indignation at a war of naked impe­ bloodiest ruling class on the planet. o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal (includes English-language Spartacist and Black History and the Class Struggle) rialist aggression in order to pressure But this understanding of imperialism international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seam ail Democratic Party politicians into stand­ doesn't actually explain what it is, which ing up for a more "humane" U.S. capital­ makes it impossible to find a way of end­ o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) ism. The ANSWER protest call boasted ing it. Imperialism is the "highest stage of o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) that the demos "come just one week capitalism," marked by the concentration Name ______before midterm Congressional elections," and domination of finance capital, the raising the prospect that "anti-war forces" pre-eminence of the export of capital and Address could "become a major factor" in debates competition among the advanced indus­ Apt.# _____ "within the political establishment." trial countries to control markets and City ______State Zip _____ Among other liberal fixtures, the fea­ spheres of exploitation. Let us consider Phone (____ ) ______E-mail ______~~ ___ tured speakers in D.C. included Demo­ this definition in more detail. American 791 cratic Party politicians Al Sharpton, Jesse oil companies such as Exxon today are Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 Jackson and Cynthia McKinney and commonly referred to as multinational

15 NOVEMBER 2002 9 put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and locked out by the bosses, who want to U.S.-led killing of three million Koreans will place double chains on BraziL If break the union, rather than having gone in 1950-53, and that continues to starve Mass Protests ... Brazil on the contrary should be victori­ (continued from page 9)' ous, it will give a mighty impulse to out on strike, even the screaming head­ Iraqis to this day. On the issue of UN national and democratic consciousness lines of the bourgeois media confirmed weapons inspections, if you read any of the. working class, both in the U.S. and of the country and will lead to the over­ that these workers are critical to the func­ the publications of the reformist "social­ abroad. The starting point for revolution­ throw of the Vargas dictatorship. The tioning of American capitalism. Clearly, ists" in this country, they' whine about ary opposition to U.S. attack is that the defeat of England will at the same time the proletariat can bring the economy of how it is not true that Iraq is developing workers of the world take a side in this deliver a blow to British imperialism and .will give an impulse to the revolutionary the "world's only superpower" to a halt. "weapons of mass destruction." Correct conflict-with Iraq against U.S. imperi­ movement of the British proletariat." When 100,000 antiwar protesters marched enough, but eveI1if Iraq were not so dis­ alism. A war between the U.S. and Iraq -Trotsky, "Anti-Imperialist around the White House, Bush at most armed and weakened by imperialism, the would be reactionary and predatory on Struggle Is Key to Liberation" probably yawned. But when 10,000 long­ spying inspectors, these agents of war, the part of the U.S., but just and defensive (September 1938) • shoremen shut down the West Coast should have no right to be there! on the part pfIraq. On one side of this ter­ The one-sided slaughter carried out by ports, he quickly moved to invoke the In every war, there are always some of ribly unequal contest is the U.S. military the U.S.-led coalition in 1991 and the anti-labor 1947 Taft-Hartley law to re­ these "progressive" imperialists on hand, behemoth; on the other is the semicolo­ impact of sanctions have left the Iraqi open the ports. who break with the Democratic Party nial Iraq, a dependent country. There is military one-third its former size. As a The defense of Iraq against imperialist. consensus the better to perpetuate the a qualitative difference between bloody result, the chief defense of Iraq lies in attack is in the interests of working peo­ illusion that the Democrats represent the U.S. imperialism, the greatest enemy of class struggle against the imperialist rul­ ple the world over, not least in the U.S. interests of working people and the op­ the oppressed in the world, responsible ers, above all in the U.S. but also in the War demands civil peace. A decade of pressed. All these politicians want to do is for the massacres of millions upon mil­ other imperialist strongholds. A histori­ imperialist attacks against defenseless to get ahead of, and contain, antiwar sen­ lions of people, and a tin pot dictatorship cal example: In the 1950s, with Algeria peoples abroad has been accompanied by timent. They believe they have a better like Hussein's Iraq. Imagine Iraq trying way for jmperialism to go about its daily to send an armada of ships to bombard business of exploiting workers and the East Coast of the U.S. In fact, it is impoverishing and terrorizing the peoples because Iraq is so weak at the moment of the world. Congresswoman Barbara that the U.S. is so bold about attacking it. Lee in the Bay Area is one such politi­ Easy wins, such as that in Afghanistan, cian; she is the darling of the refor­ embolden the imperialists to run rough­ mist left despite the fact that her qualified shod over other peoples. In turn, any set­ antiwar votes against Afghanistan and back or defeat of the U.S. imperialists ill now Iraq have alternated with backing the a victory for working people across the USA-Patriot Act, an expression of the world. The humiliating military defeat of "war on terror" at home. Lee, who was U.S. imperialism by the heroic workers greeted with near-religious ecstasy at and peasants of Vietnam, who were fight­ the San Francisco demo a week ago, is ing for a social revolution against capital­ joined in this role by Jesse Jackson and ist exploitation and imperialist depreda­ Al Sharpton. tion, produced what is known as the The reformists, despite the occasional "Vietnam syndrome"-the fact that the speechifying about socialism, do not Americart public will not countenance think workers revolution is possible. American troops dying in foreign lands. That leaves them with few options but to The victory of the-Vietnamese Revolution appeal to the Democrats. Consider WWP served to stay the hand of bloodsoaked . and its ANSWER coalition. Of course, American imperialism around the globe. they claim to oppose the Democrats; We say: two, three, many more defeats an article in Workers World (31 October) for U.S. imperialism! distributed at the October 26 demon­ Military defense of Iraq does not imply Revolutionary Internationalist Contingent at October 26 San Francisco antiwar demonstration. strations about the Bolsheviks in World the slightest political support to the re­ War I even argued against "trying to win gime of Saddam Hussein, who has carried fighting for its national independence vicious union-busting, the loss of mil­ over liberal politicians and capitalists out terrible slaughters of Kurds and other from France, there were instances in lions of jobs and the shredding of the who are beholden to the interests of Big ethnic minorities, Communists and labor which French dock workers aided the social safety net. The "war on terror" Oil, Wall Street and the military contrac­ leaders, any who might challenge his Algerian cause by refusing to handle means anti-immigrant witchhunts, racist tors." An earlier article, "War and the rule. But in this Hussein is no different French military goods headed for Alge­ assaults and the shredding of civil rights, Class Struggle" (Workers World, 26 Sep­ from any of the other emirs, colonels and ria. More recently, Japanese dock work­ with organized labor the ultimate target. tember), has some fine language about sheiks of the region, not to mention the ers in Sasebo refused to load armaments Ominously, there are plans to call up how the working class has the potential Zionists with their huge nuclear arsenal and military supplies onto Japanese navy large numbers of the National Guard and strength to intervene and change history who are fully capable of expelling or ships headed to assist the U.S.-led war of Reserves at the outset of an attack on Iraq because of its strategic role in production. massacring Palestinians on a truly geno­ terror on Afghanistan last year. to patrol what we are told are potential We are told that the "vaunted technology cidal scale under cloak of a U.S. attack on terrorist targets: power plants, transporta­ [of the ruling class] is just a pile of junk Iraq. In the struggle between a dependent, Centrality of the Working Class tion hubs, medical centers and factories, once the fury of the masses is unleashed." barbaric dictatorship and an imperialist Why is the working class the key social i.e., the strategic industrial centers. It does sound exciting-but how is the "democratic" republic, socialists would force? Precisely because of its role in The main obstacle to independent fury of the masses to be unleashed? side with the dependeqt country notwith­ production, which bestows upon it alone working-class action is the.Jeadership Through the October 26 demos? standing its dictatorship and against the the ability to shut down the ports, the of the trade unions, the labor burtaucracy ANSWER's call for this "furious" imperialist country notwithstanding its mines and the factories. Workers create which ties the workers to the class enemy, demonstration talks about the "Bush "democracy." Trotsky addressed this ques­ the wealth of this society with their 1abor most often through support to the Demo­ administration's" war and "another war tion in the 1930s posing a hypothetical and can bring the capitalists to their knees cratic Party. ILWU bureaucrats spoke at for Big Oil." The leaflet doesn't see fit to case of Brazil, then under a semi-fascist by withholding that labor power. One the October 26 demos on both coasts. A mention their alleged opposition to the regime, going to war with "democratic" example of the tremendous social power union leader in San Francisco spoke bit­ Democrats, or to even mention the Demo­ England: . wielded by the working class is given by terly of all the work the ILWU did to get crats; nor does it take up the strategic role "In the conflict between them it will not of the working class. But it does slip in be a question of democracy or fascism. If the recent West Coast port shutdown. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein England should be victorious, she will Though the ILWU longshoremen were elected, only to have her "betray" the that point that the demos come "just one union by calling for Taft-Hartley during week before midterm Congressional elec­ the longshore lockout. Labor must break tions." But of course, Workers World with the Democrats and Republicans, claims to "oppose" pressuring the Demo­ which will require a political fight within crats! That is why the mass-produced the trade unions against their pro-capital­ placard for the rally signed by ANSWER ist misleadership. We fight for a class­ had no political content at all, just a Web site: www.icl-fLorg • E-mail address:[email protected] struggle leadership in the trade unions. tug-at-your-heartstrings photo of an Iraqi child and the slogan "Stop the War National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 (212) 732-7860 This is part of our fight to build a revolu­ tionary workers party that mobilizes the Against Iraq." That is why they dared not Boston Los Angeles Oakland working class and all the oppressed in the utter a "furious" word from the platform Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 fight against imperialist rule. in D.C. That is why its major initiative Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 coming off the demos is the People's (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 Reformists and Anti -War Referendum, a petition drive Public Office: Sat. 2-5 p.m. Public Office: the Democratic Party collecting the signatures of those who Chicago 3806 Beverly Blvd., Room 215 Sat. 1-5 p.m. Half the Democrats voted in favor of feel "Congress did not represent me" in 1634 Telegraph Box 6441, Main PO the Congressional war resolution. The its war vote, to be brought to D.C. at the Chicago, IL 60680 New York 3rd Floor (312) 563-0441 Box 3381, Church St. Sta. other half fear a war could throw the Near time of planned January demonstrations. Another group working to build "the Public Office: New York, NY 10008 San Francisco East into turmoil or spark social struggle Sat. 2-5 p.m. (212) 267-1025 Box 77494 at home. These dissenting voices would broadest possible antiwar movement" 222 S. Morgan Public Office: San Francisco prefer that the U.S. dress up its naked is the Revolutionary Communist Party. (Buzzer 23) Tues. 6:30-8:30 p.m. CA 94107 imperialist aggression by first acquiring They are behind the "Not In Our Name" and Sat. 1-5 p.m. the backing of its UN allies and allowing coalition, which organized nationwide 299 Broadway, Suite 318 the UN weapons inspectors (in reality demonstrations on, October 6. No less spies) to enter Iraq to manufacture a than ANSWER, the Not In Our Name pretext for war. All the better to build coalition seeks to channel disgust with broader support for this imperialist war imperialist war into the illusion that mass Toronto Vancouver through the fig leaf of the UN. protest by itself can stay the hand of the Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. The UN is the same imperialist den of imperialists. Its "Pledge of Resistance," Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 distributed widely at the antiwar dem­ (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 thieves and their victims that partitioned Palestine in 1947, that gave cover to the onstrations, speaks of the "injustices" of 10 WORKERS VANGUARD "our government." Such moral entreaties linist bureaucrats and fight to extend pro­ and talk of "our" government perpetuate letarian rule to the advanced capitalist the myth that American capitalist rule can countries. be pressured to act on behalf of those The same American ruling class that whom capitalism exploits and oppresses. used COINTELPRO in the 1960s to Then there is the ISO, which is very Only the people round up the perceived "enemy within" active in building antiwar coalitions on in the person of black militants, partic­ the campuses. On occasion, the ISO can stop war ularly those around the Black Panther claims the heritage of Lenin and Trotsky For Workers World Party, is now rounding up immigrants, and purports to build a "socialist alterna­ Party, "the people" expanding domestic spying programs tive," but in reality it has nothing to do means Democratic and shredding constitutional rights in its with the revolutionary program of the Party politicians like "war on terror." Reformists portray the Bolsheviks. When the ISO speaks of AI Sharpton, seen capitalist state as a neutral body which unity in the antiwar movement, it is not addressing D.C. rally can be pressured to serve the interests of referring to the unity of the working class as WWP leader the working class and oppressed. But in and its allies internationally on the basis Larry Holmes reality, the capitalist state is the instru­ of class struggle, but class-collaborationist (far right) looks on. ment for organized violence to ensure unity based on the politics of the lowest the rule of the bosses. common denominator. What this unity Below: International Socialist Organization promotes liberal pacifism, refusing We put our Marxist principles to work to call for defense of Iraq against U.S. imperialism. results in was shown in 1991 when the WV Photos in our own mobilization in Oakland, Cal­ ISO tore up its paper opposition to sanc­ ifornia last February 9 against the "war tions in order to endorse a "Campaign for on terror." In contrast to the fake social­ Peace" coalition march which called for ists who betray their ostensible program UN sanctions as an "alternative" to war. to get the "biggest possible turnout," we Some "socialist alternative." drew a class line. The call for the protest In its I November issue, the last issue declared: "What America's racist rulers before the elections, the ISO's Socialist can get away with will be determined Worker ran an article headlined "Demo­ by class struggle .... A united demonstra­ crats Sweating over Outcome of Midterm tion of the power of our class, together Elections-Why Won't They Stand Up to with youth, black and immigrant organ­ Bush?" Included in the article are per­ izations, can spike the bosses' racist functory statements about how "we need 'national unity' campaign." And we had a to build a s.ocialist alternative," but the very successful united-front mobilization, core of the article is an advice column to the first protest in the country against the the Democratic Party: "national unity" campaign that was cen­ "How can the Republicans be hoping to tered on the power of labor. It brought out win in spite of all the factors working immigrant, black and white workers against them? .. "The more important reason for the alongside radical-minded youth in action Republicans' prospects is the spineless­ against the bloodthirsty U.S. imperialists. ness of Democrats. The recent 'debate' he terms "military" sanctions against Iraq Bush administration now has arrogated There is ample reason for people all in Congress over Bush's war drive so as to keep the Iraqi military weak and to itself the right to go after anybody over the world, including within this against Iraq is a good example .... therefore leave the country in continued at any time, even threatening a nuclear country, to fear the U.S. capitalist class "The Democrats-as they have so many servitude to the imperialist powers. first strike. Opposition to imperialism times in the past two years-rolled over and its state. But the commonly held when Bush demanded a congressional The other half of the Greens' alleged requires defense of those gains the inter­ belief that U.S. imperialism is omnipotent resolution authorizing a war. The Demo­ opposition to war is a demand to "shift national working class has already won. and eternal not only serves the interests crats' conventional wisdom was that they investment from military spending to Trotskyists fought tooth and nail against of the ruling class, but it is wrong. The should vote for the resolution so they address the basic needs of humanity." capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet key ingredients already exist to bring could 'get back to' talking about the economy. But this cynical ca1culation­ Such "butter not guns" talk was peddled Union. For their part, the ISO and other down U.S. imperialism. This irrational, made at the cost of thousands of Iraqi by the reformists as well, and its varia­ reformists cheered the collapse of the bloody capitalist system has bred the lives-ignored two factors. tions appeared on innumerable signs on Soviet Union, backing every imperialist­ seeds of its own destruction, and it can do "First, it ignored the real possibility that October 26. This poses the question as if sponsored counterrevolutionary cause in nothing to change that fact. As mighty challenging Bush on the war would win the capitalists just need a change of pri­ the process. American capitalism developed, so did more support than it would lose .... orities. The call to end war and allocate It is as part of our struggle against an organized, multiracial working class "Second, avoiding a debate about Iraq assumed that the Democrats have some­ money for social programs and other imperialist capitalism that we stand for with the power to bring down the war­ thing to say about other issues. But good things begs the question of how all the unconditional military defense of mongers. Every bloody military adven­ the Democrats haven't even offered an this will be accomplished. Exploitation, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba­ ture the imperialists undertake abroad, alternative." unemployment, racial oppression and im­ the remaining deformed workers states­ every attack on workers, blacks and The operational conclusion: Let's protest perialist war are endemic to the capital­ against imperialism and capitalist resto­ immigrants here, creates fresh social tin­ in large numbers to give the Democrats ist profit system. This blood-drenched ration, including defending the right of der. The way forward is to build a revolu­ some spine so that they might offer an and war-driven system must be destroyed North Korea and the others to possess tionary party of the Bolshevik type that alternative next time. In the same article, through the revolutionary struggle of the nuclear weapons to defend themselves can infuse the working class with an the ISO states its support for Stanley American working class. against the war-crazed imperialist mad­ understanding of its historic task to over­ Aronowitz, Green Party candidate for men. Simultaneously, we call for workers turn the imperialist order and reorganize New York governor. In the 2000 presiden­ For New October Revolutions! political revolution to oust the sellout Sta- society on an egalitarian socialist basis .• tial elections, the ISO hustled the vote for The greatest defeat yet to world impe­ Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, a rialism was the 1917 Russian Revolution, capitalist politician whose stated purpose which ripped one-sixth of the globe from in running was to pull the Democrats "in the clutches of the capitalists amid the Spartacist~ Forum , the right direction." carnage of the first interimperialist world war. The October Revolution demon­ Green Party, Shill for strated in practice that the proletariat the Democrats in power was the sole force for human The Green Party had a large presence at progress on the plariet. It succeeded be­ the October 26 demos, and many left­ cause the working class of Russia was led leaning youth view it as an alternative to by a party, the Bolsheviks, which opposed the Democrats. But the role of capitalist its "own" Russian imperialist rulers de­ Saturday, Nov. 16, 5 p.m. For more information: (312) 563-0441 third parties like the Greens in the U.S. is spite the patriotic fury of World War I. e-mail: [email protected] to divert anger among the masses away In turn, the destruction of the Soviet University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Center (CCG) Room 613 from social protest and back into bour­ Union through capitalist counterrevolu­ 750 S. Halsted CHICAGO geois electoral politics. Plain and simple, tion in 1991-92 was a historic defeat for the Greens are shills for the Democrats. working people all over the world, not On October 26, the Greens passed out least for working people in Russia and .-----Trotskyist League Forums .. a handbill declaring, "Green Party op­ the former Soviet republics. Despite the poses war in campaigns nationwide." Of degeneration of the Soviet workers state what does this opposition consist? That under Stalinist misrule, it was a measure the U.S. "act in concert with the United of the power of the planned, collectiv­ Nations to address any potential security ized economy that for the most part all risks posed by Saddam Hussein." That had jobs, housing, education and health such opposition is none at all is amply care. Today, however, Russian life in all shown in the case of Germany, where the aspects is in drastic decline; unemploy­ Green Party, in a governing coalition with ment and lack of health care is rampant, the Social Democrats, has already helped infant mortality is up and life expectancy lead German imperialism into war twice, is in decline. in the Balkans and then in Afghanistan. In The collapse of the Soviet Union also an "Open Letter to the Democratic Party" decisively altered the international politi­ (31 October) last Thursday, Ralph Nader cal landscape. No longer challenged by points to not wanting the U.S. to go to Soviet military might, the U.S. imperial­ war "when rigorous UN inspectors can go ists have grown intoxicated with their Saturday, Nov. 23, 3 p.m. For more information: (604) 687-0353 to Iraq first." Although Aronowitz recom: easy success in running roughshod over Britannia Community Centre e-mail: [email protected] mends "the immediate elimination, for semi colonial peoples from the Persian 1661 Napier St. humanitarian reasons, of all economic Gulf to Haiti, making the world a Uust off Commercial Drive) VANCOUVER sanctions," he supports continuing what far more dangerous place. The unbridled 15 NOVEMBER 2002 11 WfJIIIlEIiS """'111)

Full Citizenship- Rights for All Immigrants! Asylum Now for· Haitian Refugees!

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AP photos October 29: After cops drag off Haitian refugees, SEIU service employee union militants and others protested outside INS building in Miami.

A rickety wooden boat carrying 232 ghetto. Protesters contrasted the brutal The unimaginable hell in which most power. His government is widely believed Haitian refugees and three Dominicans treatment meted out to Haitians seeking Haitians live drives thousands to flee their to have been involved in the kidnapping was shipwrecked off affluent Key Bis­ asylum-detention, humiliation, deporta­ homes and brave the treacherous waters and possible slaying of three pro-Laval as cayne, Florida, on October 29. As televi­ tion-with the way the U.S. welcomes of the Windward Passage. Most of the activists, Felix "Fete" Bien Aime, Gerard sion news helicopters circled overhead, counterrevolutionary gusanos (worms) popUlation ekes out a miserable existence Normil and Paul Musac Jean. These dis­ refugees plunged into the chest-deep whom they encourage to "flee" from on small parcels of depleted soil in the appearances, as well as other acts of water, passed small children to other ref­ Cuba. A social revolution in Cuba over­ mountainous country. The poverty rate repression, have led to demonstrations ugees and made for the shore with the turned capitalism in what had been an stands at 80 percent and more than two­ throughout Haiti. "Every time you dem­ police and U.S. Coast Guard in hot pur­ impoverished neocolony, and ever since thirds of the population is unemployed. onstrate, they want to kill you," one of the suit. The cops shut down the busy Rick­ then the U.S. has been determined to Now the U.S. imperialists have withheld refugees said. "They beat me. It's not enbacker Causeway, which links Key Bis­ overturn the Cuban Revolution and re­ $500 million in international loans and easy to return to Haiti because I can die" cayne to Miami, as sympathetic drivers establish capitalist exploitation in that grants, threatening to phmge Haiti into (Washington Post, 7 November). passing by picked up people desperately country. even deeper destitution. In the early 1990s, high rates of HlV / seeking to evade the police. For America's racist rulers, Haitians Haiti was born of a great ,slave rebel­ AIDS in Haiti were used as a pretext to Cold and hungry, the refugees were represent not only a significant flow of lion that extended from 179 f to 1804, detain Haitian refugees in the U.S. When quickly rounded up and herded into de­ immigration into the United States, but a out of which emerged the first Indepen­ the government banned Haitians from tention centers, including the infamous flow of black immigration in particular. dent black republic in the Caribbean. donating blood, it touched off huge pro­ Krome Avenue concentration camp in Last December, the Bush administration The Haitian Revolution was an example tests on the East Coast, including a march Miami, to be held until the Immigration instituted a policy of automatically jail­ and inspiration for all major slave revolts of 70,000 in New York City in April 1990. and Naturalization Service (INS) deports ing Haitian asylum-seekers in detention in the American South that followed. Today, it is the "war on terror" that is used them. Nineteen of those. who made the ct;nters-a practice not applied to refu­ And for the Southern slavocracy, which to go after Haitians and other immigrants. harrowing journey have already been gees from any other country. The treat­ dominated pre-Civil War U.S. govern­ A recent statement by the Coast Guard hauled back to a dock in Port-au-Prince, ment of these most recent refugees has ments, Haiti was a frightening spectre justified increased patrols in the Carib­ Haiti by the Coast Guard. been so vicious that even two right-wing to be isolated and suppressed (see "The bean, declaring Haitian and other "illegal The roundup of the refugees sparked Cuban American Republicans in the Flor­ Haitian Revolution and the American migration" to be "a matter of national almost immediate protest in Florida. ida state legislature have demanded that Slavocracy," WV No. 764, 14 September security." The border with Mexico, al­ Some 300 demonstrators confronted Gov­ the Haitians "be afforded all procedural 2001). ready militarized by the Clinton adminis­ ernor Jeb Bush on October 30 as he rights, in order to ensure that they are not Throughout the 20th century, one dic­ tration, has been sealed tighter since 9/11. swung through Miami's Liberty City summarily deported." tator after another was propped up by the In the past year alone, hundreds have died U.S. imperialists, who twice occupied the as undocumented immigrants are forced » "0 country, first under Democratic president to make their way through deserts and Woodrow Wilson beginning in 1915 and mountains. The bodies of eleven Mexican again under Bill Clinton. The 1994 occu­ migrants were discovered in a grain car in pation came after mass demonstrations Iowa on October 14; it was estimated that in Haiti demanding the return of popu­ their bodies had been there for at least list president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who four months. had been deposed three years earlier by The hundreds of thousands of Haitians a military coup. This was a classic exam­ who labor in America's garment sweat­ u.S. military ple of the U.S. bourgeoisie using the shops, restaurants, hospitals and other pOliceman pretext of "human rights" to justify an service industries provide a vital link be­ brutalizing man imperialist invasion, grotesquely dubbing tween the impoverished masses of Haiti during 1994 occupation of it "Operation Uphold Democracy." As we and the multiracial working class in the Haiti ordered by warned at the time: '''Restoring democ­ U.S. It is particularly as part of the Amer­ Clinton White racy' was just a fig leaf for racist U.S. ican proletariat fighting for a socialist House in name imperialism's real agenda, which is to revolution in the U.S. that these workers of "restoring restore order, and clamp down on Haitian will play a critical role in the struggle for democracy." emigration to the U.S." ("U.S. Out of the emancipation of the long-suffering Haiti!" WVNo. 607, 30 September 1994). Haitian masses from the depredations and Today, Aristide has unleashed state exploitation of U.S. imperialism. Asylum repression against the populist Lavalas now for Haitian refugees! Full citizenship movement on whose back he came to rights for all immigrants!. .

12 15 NOVEMBER 2002