For Labor Action to Bring Down Reagan!
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-r NUMBER 94 25 CENTS '~~~)(.. 523 OCTOBER 1981 • • eae:an • rl e reaKer, • oVle a aKer For Labor Action to Bring Down Reagan! Thousands of buses, seven special trains and to bring out the union ranks. But they were careful to program of class struggle. Over 8,000 copies of the countless private cars rolled into Washington, D.C. on stay as far as they could from the real issues posed: the Spartacist League's newspaper Workers Vanguard September 19. In the largest labor demonstration in P A TCO strike and the need for concrete union action were sold. WV's powerful and popular slogan "Shut u.s. history, as many as 500,000 workers from the East against union busting, "austerity," falling .real wages, Down the Airports!". contrasted sharply with the Coast, Midwest and the South came to demonstrate unemployment and the desperate condition of minor Communist Party (CP) and Workers World reformists their hatred of Reagan. One after another, massive ities. As an angry steel worker remarked, "We should whose handouts merely echoed the bureaucrats' contingents of machinists and auto workers, govern have been here during the week to shut down program of class collaboration with the Democratic ment workers and miners marched down Constitution Washington." It is because of sentiments like these, the Party. PATCO strikers bought extra copies of WVto A venue shouting, "Reagan's gotta go!" They certainly danger that things could "get out of hand" and turn hang up on their union bulletin boards. Later, one WV had ample reason to be angry: savage attacks on the into a class struggle against the capitalist government, salesman told how' workers would gather as he P A TCO strikers, massive budget cuts in everything that such mobilizations are called by the union tops soapboxed about the need for militant labor action. He from unemployment compensation to school lunches, only under extreme pressure. sold over 200 papers, a dozen at a time, by h,anding and now, an attempt to eliminate union-scale wages at The demonstration was a rare opportunity for them around as he talked, then collecting the quarters federally financed construction sites. revolutionaries to reach masses of workers with the continued on page 10 Far more important than the size of the demonstra tion was its class character-it waS' proletarian, representing the social power to bring down Reagan ~ through class struggle. However it wasn't for class struggle that the union leaders brought hundreds of ~ItJJ What Spartacists thousands of workers into the streets. AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland called the massive protest to Fought for in deflect working-class outrage into electoral support for the bosses' Democratic Party "alternative." September the ·Vietnam 19 was "the first step in the 1982 election," said one union bureaucrat. Antiwar Movement Their backs to the wall, caught between Reagan's See page 6 all-out war against labor and the restlessness of the union memberships, the labor bureaucrats were forced I '-- -~ 2 YOUNG SPARTACUS Sam Marcy' in Bed with Bella "All-Peoples" Congress Class-Collaborationist Scam The "All-People's Congress" (APC) Abzug, Paul O'Dwyer and Ramsey "official" Democratic Party-dominated demonstrations the program of the scheduled to take place in Detroit this Clark sit on the board. "New endorse-' rally. PAM marshals set up a human bourgeois liberals, they have renounced any claim to representing the socialist month claims it will organize mass ments are rushing in!" declares the 25 chain in an attempt to keep demonstra interests of the working class." action to "Overturn the Reagan Pro September issue of Workers World and tors from attending the Anti-Imperialist -Workers World, 7 May 1971 gram of Cutbacks, Racism and War." it's more of the same: black Democrats rally organized around the call for Today we find this very same Sam Sound good? Well, hold on to your from Congress to the Detroit City "Military Victory to Leftist Insurgents" Marcy in bed with Bella! wallet because the APC's purpose is to Council. The Marcyites' opportunism is and "Defense of Cuba/USSR Begins in Nowhere in the APC literature can unite "all anti-Reagan" forces behind exceeded only by their pretentiousness, EI Salvador," herding them quickly one find so much as the word "imperial the party of racism and war: the that the All-People's Congress will be an away to hear Bella fulminate about ism." In fact, EI Salvador is only Democratic Party. important mobilization against the "visiting electoral punishment" on the mentioned in passing in the APC The APC is sponsored by People's Reagan administration. In fact, it is Republicans. brochure, noting that "anti-war activists Anti-War Mobilization (PAM) which likely to be a first-class organizational Even from their origins as a pro fighting to prevent future Vietnam wars in turn is dominated by Sam Marcy's mess with every "constituency" vying Stalinist split from Trotskyism in 1958, in EI Salvador" should attend the Workers W orId Party /Y duth Against with each other for their place in the sun. the Marcyites have come a long way congress. Revolutionists, of course, do War and Fascism. A combination of Well-known for organizing the May 3 down. While WWP IY A WF 's "mili not prate about "no more Vietnams" old-fashioned Rooseveltian "Iiberal/ protest over U.S. involvement in El tancy" was largely restricted to verbal since U.S. imperialism met a humiliat labor" coalitionism and New Left Salvador last spring, PAM is already an cheerleading for every kind of Third ing defeat in Vietnam at the hands of the sectoralism, the APC is likely to more old hand at tailing the Democratic World nationalism a decade ago, even victorious NLF/DRV forces. But de closely resemble a three-ring circus than Party, class enemy of the workers its occasional criticisms of the "official feating U.S. imperialism is not on a serious popular-front "alternative" to and oppressed. While bloody civil war antiwar movement" could today be PAM's agenda. Reagan. Every single-issue group under rages in EI Salvador between the directed toward WWP IY A WF itself. In Just what is on the PAM/APC the sun is supposed to be represented: worker and peasant masses on the one an editorial, "Lessons of the Washing agenda is difficult to discuss since the welfare rights, anti-nuke, anti-draft, side and the U.S.-backed butcher junta ton Demonstrations," Marcy had this to APC literature contains nothing besides tenants, feminists, black nationalists, on the other, PAM has refused to take a say about "antiwar" Democrats: a lot of vague rhetoric about "the gays, as well as a sprinkling of"progres side, i.e. it refused pointblank to call for "For the Muskies, the Fulbrights and people" fighting for "social justice" sive" trade-union bureaucrats, all tied to the defeat of U.S. imperialism and its the McGoverns are in truth only through "united mass action." Suffice it the Democrats. A glance at the National allies. To make this crystal clear to its opposed to the war (and here we may also mention the Hartkes, the Abzugs to say there is no mention whatsoever of Advisory Board of the APC gives a hint liberal bloc-partners, PAM consciously and the Lindsays, as well) because it is urgently needed class struggle to put a as to just whose program will be in sought to draw a bloodline between being lost. ... screeching halt to Reagan's union command in Detroit-among others, the Spartacist League/SYL-organized "By surrendering their [CP, SWP, etc.] busting, budget-slashing, strike "liberal" Democratic hucksters Bella Anti-Imperialist Contingent and the own program and adapting at the breaking attacks. When the air traffic controllers struck and received the full force of Reagan reaction, Workers World fell in line behind the AFL-CIO bureaucracy's refusal to act. While the SL/SYL called for the only winning strategy-that labor shut the airports Ex-YAWFer Joins SYL down tight-Marcy praised the Septem ber 19 demonstration as a first step (!) I was a member of Workers World disgusted. PAM was set upto organize Workers W orId cheerleads the FDR -toward winning the P A TCO strike. A for about a year and a half. I left that the largest number of people around in El Salvador, a popular front that peculiar "first step" indeed, since the organization six months ago when it the smallest amount of politics. They ties the working class to bourgeois September 19 march occurred over a became apparent that Workers W orId might as well become organizers for organizations, and which is further month after the controllers went out! was not trying to build a revolutionary the left wing of the Democratic Party. more led by a former member of the Hobnobbing with the Democrats party with roots in the trade unions but Workers W orId is now preparing to junta! The SL/SYL calls for military seems to have affected Marcy's basic was instead putting their efforts into build for "national days of resistance" victory to the leftist FMLN and a sense of reality as well-he suggested building "broad-based coalitions" to Reagan's cuts in social services. break with the popular front which can that mobilizing the bourgeois courts in a whose politics are essentially those of They are calling for women, blacks, only lead to a bloody defeat for the show of "independence from the execu the Democratic Party. the unemployed and all who are working class. tive" to overrule anti-labor legislation affected by the cuts to join together in In order to appeal to feminists and The SL/SYL also calls for political might be a key to PA TCO's victory as demonstrations against them.