50C!:

No. 679 ~X423 28 November 1997 u.s. Out 01 the Persian Gull! The U.S. government's latest display of l;lrinkmanship in the Persian Gulf, directed against its favorite bogeyman, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, highlights the deadly arrogance and hypocrisy of the American capitalist class. Under the pre­ text of enforcing the United Nations' right to spy on Iraq-through monitoring Iraq's purported manufacture of "weap­ ons of mass destruction"-U.S. imperial­ ist chief Clinton dispatched an armada of over 300 fighter jets and 20 warships, many of these equipped with nuclear weapons. Yet again, the Iraqi people were threatened with attack by the U.S. mili­ tary terror machine, which slaughtered tens of thousands during the 1990-91 Gulf War and continues to enforce a UN­ sponsored blockade which has killed well over 600,000 children and more than a million people overall through starvation and disease in the past seven years. The immediate threat of a U.S. military strike has subsided with the deal brokered by the Russian government allowing UN weapons inspectors, including Ameri­ cans, back into Iraq. Unlike in 1990-91, this time the U.S. ran into significant opposition to its war moves against Iraq from its fellow imperialists and Arab client regimes. French, Russian and Ital­ ian oil companies have already signed agreements with Baghdad guaranteeing a AP huge share of production in Iraqi oil tral Asian oil fields and pipeline routes. will be to minimize the presence of U.S. hasn't lived up to them" (New York Times, fields the minute UN sanctions are ended. The Gulf War was an attempt by the U.S. companies in global markets and to 24 November). The U.S.-backed Zionist The Russians also hope that if Iraq can to secure control of the region through weaken them in their domestic markets." regime in Israel continues its bloody increase its oil exports, Moscow might projecting its military power, ultimately Growing opposition to Washington expansionist campaigns against the Pales­ see some of the billions of dollars in loans aimed against Japan, Germany and other among its normally pliant Arab client tinians, which have fueled the threat to Iraq by the former Soviet government. U.S. rivals. Following the collapse of the states, such as Mubarak's Egypt, also posed to Arab regimes like Mubarak's by While screaming about Iraq's sup­ USSR, conflicting interests between the acted to muck up Clinton's designs Islamic fundamentalists. We say: Israel posed "weapons of mass destruction," imperialist "allies," which had been sub­ against Iraq. The Arab capitalist regimes out of the Occupied Territories! the U.S. continues to enforce the deadly ordinated to the anti-Soviet Cold War of the region, which overwhelmingly Clinton's displeasure with the Zionist sanctions which are themselves weapons consensus, have increasingly come into backed the U.S. in the 1990-91 "Desert regime has its limits. While U.S. propa­ of mass terror, consciously targeting civil­ the open. This includes mounting oppo­ Slaughter," feel like they have been left ganda mills churned out endless denunci­ ian populations, particularly the more sition to U.S. embargoes against Iran, out in the cold by the U.S. Washington is ations of Iraqi weapons programs, such as impoverished. Food has repeatedly been Iraq, Libya and Cuba-and the accompa­ currently not too happy that the Zionists the New York Times (16 November) edito­ wielded by the imperialists as a weapon. nying threats of sanctions against foreign are burning up the phony, U.S.-brokered rial castigating Saddam Hussein as "a For example, in 1982, when famine capitalist concerns that deal with those "peace process," particularl y with Prime nuclear renegade and a transporter of struck Ethiopia, the U.S. held up aid countries. In turn, elements of the U.S. Minister Netanyahu's encouragement of timeless plagues," nothing was said about because Ethiopia was a Soviet ally. ruling class are also starting to bristle increased Jewish settlement on the West the Israeli terrorist state, which unlike Iraq Behind the U.S. military moves in the over the sanctions. Thus a column in Bank. An exasperated President Clinton has been shown to possess upwards of 200 Persian Gulf is the intensified interimpe­ Business Week (24 November) argued, recently exclaimed that "Netanyahu has nuclear warheads and delivery systems rialist rivalry over Near Eastern and ~en- "The only certain effect of this policy made all sorts of promises to me and continued on page 11

Anti-Uni.on Attacks, "RedScar~~~'\;;jn{.~~e.;Q1:lJ~S~ictory Feds Out 01 the Teamsters! NOVEMBER 24-In a vindictive pay­ ond term as union president, and dictated mer head of the United Mine Workers, is Teamsters to shut down the country, from back for last August's successful and another government-supervised election. currently the subject of a federal grand in-city and national trucking to the major widely popular strike against the giant Now, the feds have effectively ripped up ports and airports. The government's only jury investigation. The government is also interest in intervening into the affairs of UPS shipping company, the capitalist the union's leadership structure, barring threatening to oust Arthur Coia as presi­ the Teamsters or any other union is to government has taken direct aim at the Carey from running and threatening to dent of the Laborers International Union, cripple their ability to fight for the inter­ International Brotherhood of Teamsters also disqualify his rival, James Hoffa Jr., which has been active in organizing low­ ests of their members by directly subor­ (lET) and the rest of the labor movement. who had cravenly welcomed Carey's paid minority and immigrant workers. dinating the unions to the government and dictating how they are run." Hard on the heels of the UPS strike, a removal. In an ominous escalation, the As we wrote in "Government Hands The Spartacist League is uncondition­ court order voided the 1996 Teamsters government today exacted an agreement Off the Teamsters!" (WV No. 673, 5 Sep­ election, in which Ron Carey won a sec- from lET leaders to seize control of the tember) in the aftermath of the UPS ally opposed to the bourgeois state's union's finances. This is a direct attack strike: intervention into the labor movement, 48 on the union's ability to wage any kind of "The government's intervention has noth­ including court suits against union "cor­ struggle against the employers. ing to do with allegations of financial chi­ ruption." Labor must clean its own house, Meanwhile, federal snoops have been canery by Carey and everything to do through a political fight against the venal, with its decades-long vendetta against the hounding one union official after another pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy. Feds out Teamsters. The capitalist state, which of the Teamsters! Government hands off on charges of "corruption." AFL-CIO represents the interests of the corpora­ 7 '"'25274 1181030' "'7 secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka, for- tions, fears the potential power of the continued on page 10 ~;t Parti§aD Defeu§e show trials of 1970 under the Franco dic­ national. In the five years from 1990 to '..... ~ ...... -. -tt tatorship and takes place in the con­ 1995, almost 2,000 political events in the ••.' •... ,.... ·WI ...... 0...... ee text of heightened state repression and Basque country were repressed, over a intimidation of the Basque independence thousand people were wounded in clashes movement. Herri Batasuna, in particular, with the police, including a number of CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES has been the target of a concerted witch­ people blinded by plastic bullets, and hunt. Its offices have been firebombed, almost 800 were arrested under your dra­ its members attacked by mobs. In several conian "anti-terrorist" legislation. As for localities HB mayors have been ousted the charges of "terrorism," we do not for­ Protest Repression of Basques from town halls and its demonstrations get that your predecessors, the "Socialist" have been prohibited. In addition, new Party administration of Felipe Gonzalez "anti-terrorist" legislation aimed at bol­ and former Falangist Jose Barrionuevo, by Spanish Gove_rnment stering the state's repressive arsenal tar­ conducted a dirty war against the Basque The following letter· was sent on Octo­ with "collaborating with an armed band." gets not only young Basque militants but separatist movement, setting up the fa­ all the working people of Spain, espe­ ber 28' by the Partisan Defence Commit­ To the Castilian-chauvinist Spanish state, scistic GAL death squads to assassinate tee in Britain to Prime Minister Jose which promotes the Francoist mantra cially immigrants. ETA members and supporters. Marla Aznar of Spain to protest the of "Spain, one and indivisible," even In the continuing oppression of the Down with the show trial of the prosecution of supporters of the group the advocacy of independence for the Basque people, Spain's much-vaunted Mesa Nacional of Herri Batasuna! Stop Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA). oppressed Basque people is tantamount "transition to democracy" is once more the witchhunt! For the right of self­ The Partisan Defence Committee vehe­ to terrorism. We demand the immediate exposed as a lie. The routine torture of determination for the Basque people! mently protests your show trial of 23 release of the leaders of Herri Batasuna "terrorist" suspects has been well docu­ Kate Klein for the leading members of Herri Batasuna (HB) and the dropping of ali charges against mented by, among others, Amnesty Inter- Partisan Defence Committee who, for having distributed a video pro­ them. moting ETA's peace proposals for the The trial of Herri Batasuna's national Basque country, are ludicrously charged leadership recalls the infamous Burgos Illinois Death Row Speedup On November 19, the state of Illinois false prosecutions of Rolando Cruz, carried out a double execution, a chilling Alejandro Hernandez, Verneal Jimerson Capitalist Crisis· and demonstration of the massive buildup of and others sentenced to death and then Socialist Revolution the capitalist rulers' apparatus of bloody proved innocent. The impulse behind The cascading financial collapse which repression. We publish below a protest capital punishment is the impulse to began in Southeast Asia and is now engulf­ letter sent to Governor James Edgar by genocide. In this deeply class- and race­ ing South Korea underscores the Marxist the Partisan Defense Committee the day based society, it is no "accident" or "aber­ understanding that capitalism is beset by before the executions. ration" that two-thirds of death row recurring economic crises. However, as Bol­ The Partisan Defense Committee vehe­ inmates in this state are black and His­ shevik leader V. I. Lenin stressed at the Sec­ mently opposes the double execution of panic, and that innocent men are framed ond Congress of the Communist Interna­ Walter Stewart and Durlynn Eddmonds up and put to death to terrorize the tional in 1920, as massive dislocations in scheduled to be carried out on November exploited and oppressed. We remember TROTSKY the imperialist world and widespread prole- LENIN 19. Capital punishment, whether by elec­ that it was in Illinois that the Haymarket tarian upheavals followed World War 1, the trocution, hanging, or the now-preferred Martyrs, union organizers and anarchists, capitalist system of exploitation will not simply collapse under the weight of its own method of lethal injection, is an act of were framed up and hanged for the contradictions. If the working-class struggles which will inevitably be provoked by a barbarity and an outrage against justice "crime" of fighting for the eight-hour day. renewed wave of capitalist attacks are to end in victory, it is necessary to build an and decency. We demand the executions of Walter international revolutionary party, a reforged Fourth International, to lead the prole­ This planned double execution is a cal­ Stewart and Durlynn Eddmonds be tariat to power through new October Revolutions around the world. culated effort to speed up death row in . stopped. Down with the racist death Illinois, even as opposition to the death penalty! The workers' mounting resentment, the growth of a revolutionary temper and ideas, penalty is mounting in this state in Mark Kelly for the and the increase in spontaneous mass strikes are obviously inevitable, since the position response to the exposed frame-ups and Partisan Defense Committee of the workers is becoming intolerable. The workers' own experience is convincing them that the capitalists have become prodigiously enriched by the war and are placing the burden of war costs and debts upon the workers' shoulders .... The capitalists can do nothing about the gap between prices and wages, and the work­ Come tt FUlldlttlllll, ers cannot live on their previous wages. The old methods are useless against this '0 'ttl'Y" calamity. Nothing can be achieved by isolated strikes, the parliamentary struggle, or the vote, because "private property is sacred," and the capitalists have accumulated such U Hollt/., Appe.,lo, debts that the whole world is in bondage to a handful of men. Meanwhile the workers' living conditions are becoming more and more unbearable. There is no other way out CI.,,-W., P,llone" but to abolish the exploiters' "private property." ... I. Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary crisis as the basis Join us for the twelfth annual Holiday a tradition dating back to the Interna­ of our revolutionary action. And here we must first of all note two widespread errors. Appeal to raise funds for those impris­ tional Labor Defense of the 1920s. Hear On the one hand, bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as "unrest," to use the oned for championing the rights of labor an update on the fight to free death row elegant expression of the British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to and the oppressed. In sending monthly political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble. stipends to class-war prisoners and addi­ This is not charity-it'S an act This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. The tional funds to them and their families of solidarity with those behind bars! bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced plunderers who have lost their heads; they are during the holidays, the PDC continues Their fight is our fight! committing folly after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their doom. All that is true. But nobody can "prove" that it is absolutely impossible for them to pacify a minority of the exploited with some petty concessions, and suppress some Music • DanCing • Food movement or uprising of some section of the oppressed and exploited. To try to ····•· •••..•••.• ;i·.· .•.•..•••..••••• ~.~'pagq ... :...· ...•· ... · .•·i •. •• ···············i .• ·~ylAre~··· .. ·· "prove" in advance that there is "absolutely" no way out of the situation would be :·.}i%;··"t~·Jqrk·•. I· sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice alone can serve as Friday, December 5 Sunday, December 7 Sunday, December 7 real "proof' in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is 5 to 8:30 p.m. 3 to 7 p.m. 1 to 4 p.m. experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary parties must now District Council 1707 United Electrical Hall ILWU Local 34 Hall "prove" in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organisation, contact 75 Varick St. (at Canal) 37 S. Ashland (at Monroe) 4 Berry St., San Francisco For more information: For more information: For more information: with the exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilise this crisis for a suc­ (212) 406-4252 (312) 454-4931 (510) 839-0852 cessful, a victorious revolution. -VI. Lenin, "Report on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of ---- SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE ---- the Communist International" (July 1920)

Get Your Copy of CLASS-STRUGGLE !~~!~~! or..~!.r!C!~r!.I!.. ~ DEFENSE NOTES! EDITOR: Len Meyers EDITOR. YOUNG SPARTACUS PAGES: Jacob Zorn No. 25 PRODUCTION MANAGER: Susan Fuller Winter 1997-98 CIRCULATION MANAGER: Mindy Sanders 501t (32 pages) EDITORIAL BOARD: Ray Bishop (managing editor), Bruce Andre, Helene Brosius, George Foster, Liz Gordon, Frank Hunter, Jane Kerrigan, James Robertson, Joseph Seymour, Alison Spencer Order from/ The Spartacist League is the U.S. Section of the International Communist League (Fourth make checks payable to: Internationalist). Partisan Defense Committee 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 P.O. Box 99 ~12tb. Alt. nUai HO'Jda, Appeal Publishing Co., 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: (212) 732-7862 (Editorial), (212) 732-7861 Canal Street Station for Prisoners (Business). Address all correspondence to: Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. E-mail address:[email protected]. III CJ~~~~ Domestic subscriptions: $10.00/22 issues. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY POSTMASTER: Send address New York, NY 10013-0099 changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY 10116. Phone: (212) 406-4252 MobilizeFree Mum/a! Now!. Abolish the RaCist Death Penalty! Geronimo Freed Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. 20 E-mail: 75057.3201 Victory lor ChicagO AntI-Klan Three . The closing date for news in this issue is November 25. @compuserve.com For 'ntem~tionallabor Defense .3 14 No. 679 28 November 1997

2 WORKERS VANGUARD Young Sparlaeus L.A. Che Guevara Commemoration SWP Welcomes Cuban Gusanos On October 22, the Young Socialists, bombing campaign against Havana tour­ revolutionary internationalist perspective which capitalist property forms have been youth group of the Socialist Workers ist hotels earlier this year. That the SWP put forward by our floor speaker, a overturned but the working class does not Party (SWP), sponsored a meeting at the can shamelessly provide a platform for Cuban diplomat speaking from the plat­ hold political power. The only way to UCLA campus titled, "Ernesto (Che) such scum-at a "commemoration" of form baldly admitted that the Havana defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution Guevara and Cuba: Past, Present and Che Guevara, no less!-speaks volumes bureaucracy does not even pay lip ser­ is through the construction of an interna­ Future." When the L.A. Spartacist League about their pretensions to be the best vice to the struggle for world socialism, tionalist Trotskyist party in Cuba to place and Spartacus Youth Club learned that " political power in the hands of the work­ .... this commemoration had been threatened :.:Q)" ers by overthrowing the nationalist bu­ by Cuban counterrevolutionary gusanos, .. ;.;.:.:::":E reaucracy of Castro through political rev­ we immediately offered to assist in a :;.(:::;j~ olution. The working people must express )~ 00 united-front defense of the meeting. Our \~ their own voice and power through their letter to the SWP noted that despite our ::l own organs of class rule, through workers fundamental disagreement with them, councils like those established in the "There must be no gusano disruption of Soviet Union before Stalin. This can only this meeting so that there can be a full be won through political struggle by a debate of views in the workers move­ Leninist-Trotskyist party that is proletar­ ment regarding which way forward for ian, revolutionary and international. Cuba. We will be there to be part of the The International Communist League defense guard in the tradition of united­ seeks to forge such a party as part of our front defense: 'March separately, strike struggle for international socialism. We together' !" understand the future of the Cuban work­ Our comrades participated in the Training for bloody ers state hangs in the balance of class defense, helping to ensure that there was counterrevolution: struggle outside the island. And espe­ gusano paramilitaries no gusano disruption. Yet, amazingly, the in Florida. cially for Cuba, that means here in the SWP then not only welcomed some gusa­ U.S., in the belly of the imperialist beast. nos into the meeting but repeatedly gave Since the withdrawal of Soviet eco­ them speaking time and politely trans­ nomic support after the Yeltsin counter­ lated their anti-communist diatribes. revolution, the Castro bureaucracy /las im­ These people represent the scum who, in plemented so-called "economic reforms" league with the CIA, routinely carry out imposing mass layoffs and privatization campaigns of terror and violence to sub­ on the Cuban workers, [and] market vert the Cuban Revolution, from the mechanisms, like the legalization of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to defenders of the Cuban Revolution. arguing instead for "strengthening the dollar. My question is: Tell me what you numerous assassination attempts against While welcoming the gusanos, the revolution" through such measures as the think of the internationalist Trotskyist Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Recently SWP tried to silence the revolutionary official "dollarization" of the economy a perspective for workers political revolu­ declassified CIA files include "Possible Trotskyism of the SLISYC, only grudg­ few years ago. These measures have tion in Cuba, for international proletarian Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt ingly calling on one of our comrades and increased inequality and pose a grave revolution to defend Cuba? Cuba," among them plans to blow up then heckling her when she spoke. In threat to the revolution (see "Eyewitness It was the capitalist counterrevolution Cuban refugee ships and other provoca­ fact, the SWP slavishly tails the Cas­ Report from Havana Youth Festival," WV in the Soviet Union which set the stage tions aimed atjustifying further imperial­ troite bureaucracy, whose espousal of the No. 674, 19 September). for this dire economic situation in Cuba. ist attacks against Cuba. An article in the nationalist Stalinist dogma of "socialism Youth interested in defending the It was the Socialist Workers Party that Miami Herald (16 November) documents in one country" is paving the way for the Cuban Revolution should think twice actually supported the Yeltsin counterrev­ how gusanos in Miami bankrolled a restoration of capitalism. Replying to the about such "friends" of Cuba as the SWP. olution in the Soviet Union. So therefore We print below, in slightly abridged form, it's the politics of the Socialist Workers the remarks at the Che commemoration Party that are absolutely opposed to gen­ by Michelle Oberman of the Los Angeles uine defense of the Cuban workers state. Spartacus Youth Club. We're for unconditional military de­ fense of the Cuban Revolution, and the * * * best way forward for that is to strengthen We stand for the unconditional defense the Cuban workers state through a politial of the Cuban Revolution against imperi­ revolution to place the political power in alist attacks, as well as the threat of inter­ the hands of the working people and nal counterrevolution. Today more than to spread the revolution internationally, ever, in the wake of capitalist counterrev­ foremost here in the imperialist U.S., olution in the Soviet Union, the existence through building an international revolu­ of the Cuban workers state is threatened . tionary workers party to lead the workers . Cuba is a deformed workers state in to power. _

NEW YORK CITY BOSTON WV Photo September 1991, New York: Spartacist League protests cutoff of Soviet aid Alternate Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Next Alternate Wednesdays at two to Cuba. . class, December 3: The Revolutionary locations. Next class, December 3:# Party and Its Program; NYU, Loeb The Revolutionary Party and Student Center, Room 414 Its Program. Information and readings: (212) 267-1025 • 2:30 p.m.: UMass-Boston, Marxist Bulletin --­ McCormack Building, Room 1-212. No.8 OAKLAND • 7:30 p.m.: Harvard Univ., Emerson Alternate Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Next class, Hall, Room 305, Harvard Yard. Cuba and December 2: The Revolutionary Party Information and readings: and the Working Class; (617) 666-9453 Marxist Theory UC Berkeley, 204 Wheeler Information and readings: Selected Documents on the (510) 839-0851 or (415) 777-9367 Cuban Question SAN FRANCISCO VANCOUVER $1.50 Tuesday, 7 p.m. Next class, December 2: Thursday, 7 p.m. Next class, Black Liberation Through Socialist December 4: Imperialism and the Revolution; Meet at cafe at 878 Valencia Fight for World Socialist Revolution; Order from: Spartacist Publishing Co. Langara College, Room A015 Box 1377 GPO Street (between 19th and 20th) New York, NY 10116 Information and readings: Information and readings: (415) 777-9367 or (510) 839-0851 (604) 687-0353

28 NOVEMBER 1997 3 olution. Like the Social Democrat Kaut­ sky, the Labour "Left" Tony Cliff and his "theory" reflected a thorough imbibing of the "democratic" credentials of the impe­ rialist bourgeoisie as against "communist totalitarianism," SWP members could gain an understanding of the contradic­ tions between Cliff's professed Marxist orthodoxy and his class treason against the interests of the proletariat by reading Lenin's delightfully savage 1918 pole­ mic, The Proietarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. SWPers interested in What Kind of "Socialists" authentic Trotskyism would do well, too, to study Trotsky's The Revolution Be­ trayed and his battle against defectors like Cliff in the volume of Trotsky's work titled In Defense of Marxism. Support Counterrevolution? Support for counterrevolution re­ mained the hallmark of Cliff's SWP through every flashpoint of Cold War II. We reprint below a leaflet distributed olutionary party. It was a beacon to the (1936), the gains of the Russian Revolu­ They hailed Polish Solidarnosc-a yel­ by the Spartacist League/Britain at a working masses around the world, who tion had been betrayed but not yet over­ low company "union" which led capital­ November 6 Socialist Workers Party saw in the victory of the Russian work­ thrown. Analysing the Soviet Union as a ist counterrevolution in Poland with meeting in London on "80 Years Since ing class the possibility to prevail over degenerated workers state, the Trotskyists direct aid from Reagan, Thatcher, the the Russian Revolution: The Fight for their own capitalist oppressors. The Bol­ fought for proletarian political revolution Vatican and German bankers, In con­ Workers' Power Today." shevik Party under the leadership of against the Stalinist bureaucracy and for trast, the Spartacist League proclaimed, The spectacle of Tony Cliff's Socialist Lenin and Trotsky understood that the unconditional military defence of the "Stop Solidarnosc counterrevolution" and Workers Party (SWP) "commemorating" preservation of the fledgling 'Russian Soviet Union against imperialist attack fought for the revolutionary unity of the the 80th anniversary of the 1917 October workers state depended upon the interna­ and internal counterrevolution. Polish, German and Russian workers Revolution and claiming the mantle of tional extension of their revolution, par­ As the Cold War military alliance of through political revolution against the Bolshevism is a grotesque farce. When ticularly to the more advanced capital­ imperialist powers against the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracies and opposition the Soviet Union still existed, Cliff's ist countries. The extreme backwardness Union tu~ned into a genocidal shooting to imperialist-inspired counterrevolution, SWP abetted the imperialist rulers' red- and impoverishment of the country, com- war, Cliff's bogus "theory" of state capi- whose main agency in Poland was CIA­ backed Solidarnosc, abetted by pseudo­ -30 August 1991 IWIRNERI ,,,,,,,.,_ leftists like the SWP. ... - ...... - The SWP cheered the bloody Afghan mujahedin butchers-armed and equipped SOIIII WDrtcen: by the CIA-who fought against the Deleat Yeillin-Bush Red Army in a "holy war" to murder un­ Counterrevolution I veiled women and schoolteachers for the "crime" of teaching girls to read. The withdrawal of the Red Army from Af­ ghanistan was a direct prelude to counter­ revolution in the Soviet Union itself, ,md this too Cliff's organisation foresaw and criminally agitated for. The SWP's Amer­ ican satellite, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) wrote, "Just as social­ ists welcomed the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam, we welcome the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan. It will give heart to all those inside the USSR and in East­ ern Europe who want to break the rule of Stalin's heirs" (Socialist Worker, May 1988). Tell that to the women, national Der Spiegel photos Cliffites joined imperialists in hailing Yeltsin counterrevolution which ushered in misery and hunger minorities and leftists living in the utter for working people. ICL fought to mobilize Soviet workers in defense of gains of October Revolution. hell of the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan today! In opposition to the pro-imperialist hot Cold War aimed at destroying the bined with the failure of revolution in the talism served as his exit visa from the Cliffites, the International Communist remaining gains of the 1917 proletarian West and the relentless onslaught of the camp of revolutionary Marxism, in abject League [then the international Spartacist seizure of power. In a rare moment of world's imperialist powers, led to the capitulation to the anti-communist La­ tendency] and Spartacist LeaguelBritain candour, Tony Cliff fulminated, "And I consolidation of a bureaucratic caste in bour Party leadership, In 1950, Tony Cliff proclaimed, "Hail Red Army in Afghani­ say no, no, we have nothing to do 1923-24 headed by 1. V. Stalin, Repudiat­ was expelled from the Fourth Interna­ stan!" and called to "Extend the gains of with bloody Russia, because it is not a ing the proletarian internationalism of tional for publicly opp6sing defence of October to the Afghan peoples!" We also source of strength" (Leveller, September the Bolsheviks, the Stalinist bureaucracy North Korea against U.S. and British put our money where our mouth is and 1979). The final undoing of the Russian retreated under the anti-Marxist, nation­ imperialism, Tony Cliff's organisation volunteered to form an international bri­ Revolution, signalled by Boris Yeltsin's alist dogma-of building "socialism in one was then nestled inside the ruling Labour gade to fight against the CIA (and SWP)­ imperialist-backed 1991 "countercoup," country." Party, which swung in behind the U,S. backed mujahedin. This offer was turned was met with gleeful approval by the Leon Trotsky formed the Left Opposi­ and sent troops to massacre the Koreans down by the Afghan government, so SWP in banner headlines proclaim­ tion to fight to return to the Leninist and later also the Chinese, Three million instead we raised thousands of dollars of ing, "The Russian Revolution of 1991" ' programme of authentic Bolshevism, the Koreans were slaughtered in this war, badly needed material aid for the victims and articles crowing that "Communism revolutionary internationalist struggle for Cliff flunked the basic Marxist acid test of imperialism's anti-Soviet crusade in has collapsed .... It is a fact that should proletarian rule. Stalin's reactionary "so­ of opposing his own bourgeoisie and Afghanistan, have every socialist rejoicing" (Socialist cialism in one country" rejected the es­ defending the deformed and degenerated In 1989-90, the International Commu­ Worker, 31 August 1991), sence of Marxism (the Communist Mani­ workers states, Cliff was a certified rene­ nist League mobilised our largest inter­ Today, Cliff boasts that the counter­ festo concludes, "Workers of the World gade from Marxism, but neither the first national intervention to bring the Trot­ revolution in the former Soviet Union Unite!") and thus the fight of Trotsky's nor the brightest. Indeed, the first "state skyist programme to the working masses demonstrates the correctness of his theory Left Opposition was essential to preserve capitalist" was the German Social Demo­ of Germany, Against German imperial­ of "state capitalism," adding that "in a and exten~ the gains of the Russian Rev­ crat Karl Kautsky, whose 1918 polemic, ism's Anschluss (annexation) of East way you feel quite happy with it" (In­ olution. As Trotsky wrote in his sear­ Terrorism and Communism, was a sus­ Germany, we fought for revolutionary ternational Socialist Review, Summer ing analysis, The Revolution Betrayed tained attack on the 1917 Bolshevik Rev- continued on page J J 1997), But if the Soviet Union was Planeta Publishers WV Photo already capitalist, how then does one explain the ravages of mass unemploy­ ment, starvation and bloody nationalist fratricide that came in the wake of the Yeltsin countercoup? And what kind of 1979 Soviet self-proclaimed revolutionary would be military interven­ "happy" with this outcome? The destruc­ tion opened road tion of the Soviet Union placed an epi­ to emancipation taph on the sordid history of Stalinism of Afghan women and the false "theory" of state capitalism, (left). Following behind which renegades from Trotskyism 1989 Soviet like Tony Cliff seek to mask their defec­ withdrawal, Spartacists tion in the crucible of class struggle from launched inter­ the side of the international proletariat to national campaign the side of their own bourgeoisie. to aid embattled The Russian Revolution of 1917 is the city of Jalalabad touchstone for revolutionaries, For th~ against mujahedin first time the working class took power cutthroats. under the leadership of a proletarian rev- 4 WORKERS VANGUARD WARSAW-Historic Polish revolution­ ary leader Rosa Luxemburg called the Catholic clergy "police in black robes." As advocates of a dialectical and materi­ alist view of history, Marxists are irrec­ oncilably opposed to all manifestations of religious backwardness. We call for separation of church and state which was a legacy of the bourgeois revolu­ tions of the 18th century. This is par­ ticularly key in Poland. In the wake of The Pope's Leftists the capitalist counterrevolution led by Lech Walesa's Solidarnose, the Catho­ To this day, they hail the Solidarnose-led Jankowski has proved it's a country of geois state explicitly embrace. This is the lic church has again come to the fore as counterrevolution which led to the resto­ anti-Semitism without anti-Semites." dirty truth about Solidarnose the Cliffite the backbone of obscurantist nationalism, ration of capitalist exploitation in the Getting right in on the act, Solidar­ reformists cover up in the service of wom~n's oppression, anti-communism service of Wall Street, Frankfurt and the nose Socjalistyczna echoes bourgeois imperialism! and anti-Semitism. City of London as "one of the greatest papers like Cazeta "'Jborcza, which pre­ We communists, in contrast, uphold The run-up to September's parliamen­ workers' struggles on earth" (Solidarnosc tends that clerical anti-Semitism is a the heroic tradition of Rosa Luxem­ tary elections, which brought jn a coali­ Socjalistyczna, March 1997). Some of "marginal phenomenon" while laying the burg's revolutionary Social Democracy, tion headed by the rabidly rightist Soli­ Cliff's younger followers now try to argue main responsibility on the previous de­ the early Polish Communist Party and darnose Election Action (AWS), was that their organization had sought to build formed workers state. The venal Polish the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, many of marked by virulent anti-Communist and them Communists and socialists, who anti-Semitic attacks on the former gov­ resisted the Nazi executioners against all erning coalition led by the ex-Stalinist odds in 1943. Likewise, we honor the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). While it 600,000 Red Army soldiers who died toned down its rhetoric in the months liberating Poland from the Nazi scourge. before the election to appease imperialist The victory of Solidarnosc and the hypocrisy, in February, scarcely a week collapse of the Polish deformed workers after the only functioning synagogue in state in 1989 after decades of Stalinist Warsaw was firebombed, Solidarnose­ betrayal ushered in mass unemployment, organized mobs marched through the homelessness and a furious wave of anti­ streets of the city screaming, "Down with Polish Cliffites Roma (Gypsy) terror, anti-Semitism and Jew communism!" The anti-Semitic agi­ ("Socialist clerical reaction. Widespread anger over tation resumed after the election, when Solidarnosc") the ravages of counterrevolution led to the AWS accepted Bronislaw Geremek, a embrace reactionary the electoral victory four years ago of the Jewish leader of the Solidarnose-derived tradition of CIA/ SLD class-collaborationist alliance led "free market" Union of Freedom, as for­ Vatican-sponsored by the ex-Stalinist Social Democrats. In cou nte rrevol ution. eign minister, in a bid for respectability Gdansk, 1980: opposing any electoral support to the among the "democratic" imperialists. The Lech Walesa SLD enforcers of anti-worker IMF aus­ infamous priest Henryk Jankowski, "spir­ being blessed by terity-either in the 1993 and 1997 par­ itual adviser" to Solidarnose since its Solidarnosc liamentary elections or in the 1995 presi­ founding in 1980, railed in a sermon "spiritual adviser," dential contest-we warned that this against "the Jewish minority in the gov­ anti-Semitic priest "left" government of capitalist austerity ernment." A day later, a Jewish schoolboy Henryk Jankowski. would pave the way for a resurgence of was seriously injured by skinhead thugs. clerical and nationalist reaction. And when church authorities slapped a (nonexistent) "left wing" in Solidarnosc. Stalinist bureaucracy certainly capitu­ Solidarnose has worked to channel Jankowski on the wrist-not for anti­ Seeking to whitewash its reactionary his­ lated to nationalism and anti-Semitism­ workers' anger against austerity into Semitism, but for being "political"-a tory, the Solidarnosc Socjalistyczna arti­ the inevitable fruit of the dogma of racist chauvinism and anti-communism fascist mob in Gdansk, birthplace of cle on Jankowski claims that "during "socialism in one country"-most noto­ and away from the profit-gorged new Solidarnosc, rallied outside his church in the massive Solidarnose strikes in the riously in the disgusting 1968 "anti­ Polish bourgeoisie and its imperialist his support. years ' 80-81, there were no anti-Semitic Zionist" purge which drove most of the godfathers. After four years of SLD­ Among those who came to the defense speeches to be heard either from Jankow­ remaining Jews out of the country. But administered "free market" misery, the of the Catholic hierarchy was a self­ ski nor from any other persons connected the Stalinists didn't hold a candle to the recent electoral victory of the Solidarnose­ styled leftist group perversely calling with Solidarnose." This is rubbish! Catholic clergy. On the eve of the Holo­ led coalition in Poland has given the itself Solidarnose Socjalistyczna-"So­ Solidarnosc always paraded under the caust, in which Hitler's Nazis (abetted by green light for a renewed outpouring of cialist" (!) Solidarnose-Polish followers crowned eagle and cross of anti-Semitic the right-wing Polish "patriots" today clerical bigotry, social reaction and inten­ of Tony Cliff's reformist Socialist Work­ Polish nationalism, and a key component idolized by Solidarnose) murdered six sified attacks on women aimed at denying ers Party in Britain (represented in the at its founding was the fascistic Con­ million Jews, one cleric fulminated: any right to abortion. Jankowski's provo­ U.S. by the International Socialist Organ­ federation for an Independent Poland. "It is an actual fact that Jews fight cation came only days after Solidarnose ization). While wagging a finger at Marian Jurczyk, a leading Solidarnose against the Catholic Church, they are deputies hung a large cross in the Sejm free-thinkers and constitute the vanguard "Father" Jankowski for being "unable to spokesman at the time, railed that Com­ (parliament) and banned sex education in keep his racist remarks to himself, in spite of atheism, bolshevism and revolution. the school system. The new government munist officials were Jews who had The Jewish influence on morals is of warnings from the church hierarchy," changed their names, "traitors to Polish fatal.... It is a fa'ct that the Jews are has already announced plans to speed the Cliffites' chief complaint against this society" for whom "a couple of gallows embezzlers, usurers and engage in the up privatization and plant closures and notorious anti-Semite is that he is a "big­ would come in handy." And Jurczyk was white-slave traffic." impose more stringent "wage discipline." time businessman" who is "far removed" among the "various radical leaders" that These words were uttered by Cardinal Against the anti-Semitic demagogues of from the working people and "even fur­ British Cliffite theoretician Chris Har­ Hlond, archbishop of Poland under the Solidarnose and their fake-left apologists, ther from the ideal of a poor and humble man hailed._ as the "left" in Walesa's fascistic Pilsudskiite dictatorship of the we fight to forge a genuine Trotskyist proclaimer of the faith" (Solidarnose Soc­ outfit (Socialist Review, 15 November- 1920s and '30s, whose traditions Jan­ party to lead the Polish proletariat for­ jalistyczna, November 1997). The article 13 December 1981). kowski, Solidarnosc and the Polish bour- ward to a new October Revolution!. approves as "notable" the one-year sus­ When Solidarnose consolidated around pension of Jankowski. that was meted out an open program for capitalist restora­ by the hierarchy, politely advising: "If tion in September 198 I, the international the church really wants to show that it ·'I;J~.bli.iatlQ········ European Union membership, hypocriti­ Order from/make checks payable to: New York City cal denials of anti-Semitism have been Saturday: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 41 Warren St. (one block below flying so thick and fast here that the Or write to: Chambers St. near Church St.) weekly Polityka (I5 November) quipped: Platforma Spartakusowcow, skr. poczt. 148,02-588 Warszawa 48, P<;>land New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 "Poland has long been known as a coun­ try of anti-Semitism without Jews, now 28 NOVEMBER 1997 5 -Wall Street and the War Against Labor Part 3: The 19305 New Deal and Labor Reformism

Wide World United Steelworkers 'of America Democratic president Roosevelt joined by CIO leader John L. Lewis during 1936 election rally. Union bureaucrats channeled upsurge of labor militancy into support for FOR's New Deal coalition.

Parts One and Two of this series lenge at the political level. The leftward mass industrial unions (except in the economist John Maynard Keynes could appeared in WV Nos. 676 and 677, 17 radicalization remained within the ideo­ South), cutting across racial-ethnic divi­ lead to full employment and prosperity and 31 October. logical and political confines of bour­ sions, and in many cases led by avowed for working people. In a recent study of During the 1930s, the impact of the geois liberalism represented by the opponents of the capitalist system. At the late 19th-century American populism, Great Depression, combined with the vic­ Democratic Party of Franklin Delano same time, the political-ideological sway Goldbugs and Greenbacks, Gretchen Rit­ tory of fascism in Germany in 1933, led Roosevelt. Elected president in 1932, of bourgeois liberalism was strengthened ter describes the movement's underlying to a leftward radicalization of the Ameri­ FDR promised American working people rather than weakened. ideology as "producerism," a belief in the can working class. In the two years fol­ a "New Deal"-a return to full employ­ Today, faced with the rise of racist yup­ natural unity and harmony of all those lowing the October 1929 stock market ment and a future of permanent and gen­ pie Clinton's "new" Democratic Party, engaged in the production of goods and crash-"Black Friday"-unemployment eral prosperity. Himself a millionaire which is openly contemptuous of the services as against financial parasites: skyrocketed from under 500,000 to over scion of the moneyed aristocracy, Roose­ labor movement, the AFL-CIO bureauc­ "Reformers argued that the producers­ nine million. In 1934, there were three velt demagogically denounced right-wing racy and its reformist hangers-on (includ­ farmers, laborers, and small business­ citywide general strikes in this country­ opponents within the capitalist class, like ing the now near-moribund CP) yearn for men-were the 'real society.' They dis­ in San" Francisco, Minneapolis and industrialist Henry Ford, as "economic a new "New Deal coalition," portraying counted the legitimacy of nonproducers Toledo, Ohio-all led by "reds," respec­ royalists." the Rooseveltian era as the heyday of such as bankers and bondholders." In the tively the Stalinists, the Trotskyists and Roosevelt's liberal bourgeois politics "progressive" politics. In fact, this class­ 1890s, populists could still envision an A.J. Muste's American Workers Party, were carried into the working class by the collaborationist coalition was fashioned economy based on small proprietors, i.e., which soon thereafter fused with the very leaders of the new industrial union as a response to the militant upsurge of one without large industrial corporations, Trotskyists. movement. Among these was a section of workers' struggles in the 1930s. It repre­ Wall Street bankers or stock exchanges. The next few years saw the formation the old-line AFL labor bureaucracy, sented a betrayal by the CIO union tops But three decades later, such a program of the mass industrial unions of the headed by John L. Lewis, who never pre­ and the Stalinists, who beheaded the pos­ was clearly fantastic. The economy was CIO, again in many cases under the lead­ tended to have any sympathy for social­ sibility of an independent workers party dominated by large corporations, and the ership of self-described communists or ism, much less "red revolution," and in and corralled the working class behind shrunken number of small manufacturers socialists. A key tactic in this unioniza­ fact thought that the labor movement the phony "friends of labor" Democrats. no longer made a significant contribution tion drive was the sit-down strike, with should be the strongest bulwark of anti­ The New Deal coalition put organized to the country's industrial output. By the the workers occupying a factory or ware­ communism. But they also included the labor in an unholy alliance not only with 1920s, the college-educated sons of well­ hOJ,lse in open defiance of capitalist prop­ Communist Party (CP), by far the strong­ its liberal class enemies in the North but to-do small businessmen were typically erty rights. The founding document of est force on. the American left. In the also with the Southern Dixiecrats, to pursuing their careers in the managerial the Trotskyist Fourth International, the course of its Stalinist degeneration over whom Roosevelt gave a free hand to wage bureaucracies of AT&T, Standard Oil, 1938 Transitional Program, noted: 'The the previous decade, the CP had passed naked racist terror against blacks and General Motors, U.S. Steel and Interna­ unprecedented wave of sit-down strikes through a "Third Period" phase of sectar­ unions. From upholding the system of tional Harvester. In the 1930s, a new ver­ and the amazingly rapId growth of indus­ ian "ultraleftism" in the late 1920s and rigid Jim Crow segregation in the South to sion of "producerism" was developed, trial unionism in the United States (the , early '30s and gone on to espousing a marshaling the working class behind the with corporate managers replacing the CIO) is the most indisputable expression "popular front" with '~progressive" bour­ imperialist rulers with the onset of World small businessmen of the earlier version. of the instinctive striving of the American geois politicians, peddling illusions in a War II, the labor bureaucracy's support to These ideas were expounded in a workers to raise themselves to the level of reformed and benevolent capitalism. Roosevelt was counterposed to the prole­ highly influential book, The Modern Cor­ the tasks imposed on them by history." Thus the development of the American tariat's class interests across the board. poration and Private Property (1932), by While the American working.class was working class in the 1930s was highly In 1942, James P. Cannon, the principal two young liberal intellectuals, Adolph A. challenging the bosses at the industrial contradictory. On the one side, there leader of American Trotskyism, explained Berle and Gardner C. Means. The former level, there was no corresponding chal- emerged for the first time in U.S. history why the economic militancy of the 1930s would soon become a leading member of was not extended into the political FDR's "brain trust" of economic advis­ sphere: "Roosevelt still appeared to the ers. Berle and Means maintained that in a workers as their champion and his social large, modern corporation control or reform program was taken as a substitute management had become divorced from for an independent political movement of ownership, and that this was, at least Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League the workers" ("Campaign for a Labor potentially, a progressive development. Party," November 1942). The social pro­ Noting that the large majority of shares in gram of the New Deal was not at all new big corporations were dispersed among o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New o Renewal thousands of individual investors and that (includes English-language Spartacist, Women and Revolution but was rather a revised version of the lib­ and Black History and the Class Struggle) eral populism which had dominated the bondholders and other creditors exerted international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail American working class since the emer­ little influence over corporate policy un­ gence of an organized labor movement in less the firm couldn't meet its debt ser­ o $2/6 introductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-Ianguag'e Spartaeist) the latter half of the 19th century. vice, Berle and Means contended that o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartaeist) corporate managers were a distinct social Name ______The Notion of Progressive group whose income and status were not Managerialism directly tied to the drive for ever-higher Address ______The defining features of the New Deal profits: 'Those who control the destiny of the Apt. # ____ Phone (_~) ______~ variant of liberal populism centered on the fiction that large corporations could typical modern corporation own so insig­ nificant a fraction of the company's stock City State Zip ______=: be made to serve the interests of society 679 that the returns from running the corpora­ Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 as a whole and that the sort of govern­ tion profitably accrue to tQem in only a mental policies advocated by British very minor degree. The stockholders, on 6 WORKERS VANGUARD the other hand, to whom the profits of the corporation go, cannot be motivated by those profits to a more efficient use of the property, since they have surrendered all disposition of it to those in control of the enterprise." In this view, corporate managers had no compelling, personal motive to hold or drive down wages nor to raise prices to benefit stockholders at the expense of the firm's customers. Berle and Means did not maintain that the men then run­ ning America's large corporations were benevolent do-gooders with the best interests of society at heart, only that large, !TIodern corporations, unlike capi­ talist enterprises in the past, were not governed by the drive to maximize prof­ 1934 its. Corporate managers therefore could Minneapolis be constrained by law, government poli­ general strike, cies and public opinion to serve what led by Berle and Means termed "the paramount Trotskyists. interests of community": "When a convincing system of commu­ nity obligations is worked out and is generally accepted, in that moment the passive property right of today must yield before the larger interests of soci­ ety. Should the corporate leaders, for example, set forth a program comprising be made to serve "the larger interests of of the trade unions. vesting in additional productive capacity, fair wages, security to employees, rea­ society" was important in keeping the The workers' support for the party of who borrowed money for this purpose sonable service to their pUblic, and sta­ exploited and oppressed tied to the capi­ industrial capitalists retlected, at least in from banks or through the bond market. bilization of business, all of which would divert a portion of the profits from the talist order, promoting the belief that cap­ part, how the superprofits derived by Brit­ Keynes maintained that the difference owners of passive property, and should italism's evils could be reformed away. ish imperialism from its colonies made it between the interest on money capital and the community generally accept such a "possible'to bribe the labour leaders and the profit gained from new investment scheme as a logical and human solution Keynes and Liberal the upper stratum of the labour aristoc­ was key to the overall level of economic of industrial difficulties, the interests of Pseudo-Socialism racy," as Russian Bolshevik leader V. I. passive property owners would have to activity. In this view, the managers of a give way." Even more important in contributing Lenin later observed in a 1920 preface to large manufacturing corporation would These words today appear to express to the ideology of the New Deal than his work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage build a new plant if the projected rate of the utmost liberal naivete. The 1980s the notion of progressive managerial­ of Capitalism (1916). With the relative profit on the project was, say, 6 percent demonstrated for all to see, and in a most ism were the theories of John Maynard decline of British imperialism at the end while interest on the money needed to dramatic way, the power of stockholders Keynes. To understand why Keynes' of the 19th and beginning of the 20th cen­ finance its construction was 3 percent­ to get rid of corporate managers seen to ideas played such an important role in turies, the political alliance between the but not if a higher interest rate cut too be disregarding their interests. In a criti­ American politics at this time, it is use­ "progressive" bourgeoisie and the trade deeply into the profit margin. cal introduction to a new 1991 edition of ful to locate him in the context of British unions broke apart. Originating as a com­ If rentiers demanded excessively high The Modern Corporation and Private politics. He was a leading intellectual in mittee within the Liberals to increase interest rates, investment and therefore Property, mainstream bourgeois econo­ the small Liberal Party, dwarfed on its trade-union intluence on party policy, the production and employment would fall. mists Murray Weidenbaum and Mark right by the Conservative (Tory) Party Labour Party was formed as. a split from This in a nutshell was Keynes' explana­ Jensen simply stated the obvious: "The and on its left by the Labour Party. the Liberals in the early 1900s. tion at the time for the world depression wave of hostile takeovers in the late During the 19th century, however, the Seeking to detlect the radicalizing which began in 1929: 1980s was a response to managers who Liberals (or Whigs) and the Tories were impact on the British working class of the "There has now developed, somewhat 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in 1918 suddenly, an unusually wide gap be­ paid insufficient attention to the concerns Britain's major parties, representing not tween the idea of borrowers and those of of shareholders .... A business is an eco­ only different policies but different sec­ Labour amended its constitution to for­ lenders, that is, between the natural-rate nomic institution, designed to provide tions of the propertied classes. The Tories mally advocate socialization of the means of interest and the market-rate .... goods and services for consumers in represented those elements derived from of production, albeit by strictly parlia­ "} am bold enough to predict, therefore, that to the economic historians of the order to benefit the stockholders." or closest to the "squirearchy," the old mentary means. In practice, this "Clause IV" was simply a "left" fig leaf for refor­ future the slump of 1930 may present Berle and Means' "classic" was origi­ landed aristocracy. Its leading members itself as the death struggle of the war­ nally published during the greatest eco­ were rentiers rather than entrepreneurs, mism and class betrayal, as successive rates of interest and the re-emergence of nomic crisis of modern times, when even living otf rents from their estates or Labour governments loyally administered the pre-war [pre-1914] rates." many workers in the U.S., a contradictory income from their financial assets. The British capitalism, occasionally tinkering -A Treatise on Money (1930) society combining an advanced economy Liberals represented above all industrial with the system but never seeking to Keynes' solution to this problem was with social backwardness, were open to capitalists-in many cases the sons of replace it with socialism. More recently, an expansionary monetary policy. He the prospect of "red revolution." The illu­ small merchants, self-employed artisans Clause IV was scrapped entirely as part strongly opposed the gold standard and sory notion that large corporations could or yeoman farmers-and had the support of "New" Labour leader Tony Blair's advocated a "managed currency" aimed drive to remold the party into an expli­ at achieving and maintaining a low inter­ citly capitalist one. est rate. During the interwar period, Keynes However, the experience of the 1930s was one of the very few prominent bour­ demonstrated, including to Keynes, that a geois intellectuals who remained active "cheap money" policy was not in itself in the Liberal Party.· His broad political enough to pull a capitalist economy out strategy was later summarized by his of a deep depression. The base interest official biographer, Roy Harrod, himself rate in the United States, the "discount an eminent British economist: rate" charged by the Federal Reserve Sys­ "During the 'twenties he hoped to st;:e a tem to its member banks, had fallen by working agreement between the Liberal the mid-1930s to a mere 1 percent from Party and the Labour Party; in the 'thir­ ties he may have nourished the hope that, 4.5 percent in 1929. Yet production and when he had achieved the culminat­ employment remained far below levels in ing expression of his own views, the the 1920s. Even at rock-bottom interest cogency of his arguments would wean rates, industrial capitalists were not going the Labour Party away from State to spend for new plant and equipment Socialism and make its members his own disciples." when they were already faced with mas­ -The Life of John Maynard sive excess capacity, stagnant demand U.S. Department of Agriculture Keynes (1951) and uncertainty about future economic Despite liberal myth, Great DepreSSion was not ended by New Deal social To this end, Keynes developed a doc­ and political developments. programs, like Civilian Conservation Corps (above), but by military production trine which can be characterized as lib­ In response to these conditions, in the for World War II. Kina Features eral pseudo-socialism, proposing that mid- I 9305 Keynes came out with a more with a particular set of government poli­ "radical" economic program. If capitalist cies a capitalist economy could achieve entrepreneurs would not borrow and the goals traditionally associated with invest on an adequate scale, the gov­ socialism: permanent full employment, ernment should do so in their stead. He steady expansion of production in line called for a massive program of pub­ with technological advances and poten­ lic works-railroads, highways, electric tial, even the gradual disappearance of power plants, office buildings, housing­ that social class which lived-and lived to be financed by borrowing rather than very well-off its accumulated wealth. increased taxation. Keynes advocated a Board of National Investment which Keynes' View of a "would in one way or another control by Benevolent Capitalism far the greater part of investment. Private According to Keynes, the main prob­ enterprise (meaning industry) requires lem with modern-day capitalism was that such a tiny fragment of total savings that those who held savings, typically the it could probably look after itself. Build­ heirs of great fortunes, were distinct from ing, transport and public utilities are and had interests divergent from the almost the only outlets for new capital industrial managers responsible for in- continued on page 8 28 NOVEMBER 1997 7 years, Washington borrowed eight times Wall Street ...- that amount to pursue the war. (continued from page 7) As noted above, conditions of full employment tend to increase wages at on a large scale" (quoted in Doug Hen­ the expense of profits. However, during a wood, Wall Street [1997]). major imperialist war the laws normally Keynes believed that industrialists and governing the labor market are in large financiers would have no choice but to part suspended-as the capitalist govern­ accept this program if ordered to do so by ment outlaws strikes, imposes wage and a democratic government-even if it price levels to ensure a generous profit harmed their interests. And such a pro­ margin and imprisons leftists and trade­ gram would harm their interests, because union militants deemed to be a threat to conditions of full employment tend to the war effort. Under the so-called "Little increase wages at the expense of profits. Steel Formula," Roosevelt's War Labor Withol!t' a "reserve army of the unem­ Board froze wages at the prewar level ployed," as Marx called it, firms can still influenced by depression conditions. expand their labor force only by offering Additional pay for overtime was elimi­ higher wages and improved benefits to nated and the workers were subjected to induce workers to leave their current ferocious speedup. The result was an employment, unions are more prone to enormous intensification of the rate of strike and the bosses find it harder to Eighteen leaders of SWP and Minneapolis exploitation, with the profits of corpora­ recruit scabs. Teamsters were sent to prison in 1943 for tions engaged in manufacturing tripling Keynes was well aware that conditions opposition to imperialist war. between 1940 and 1943. of full employment favored labor as As was the case in the earlier interim­ against capital in the determination of half the ground gained for many indexes ent and consistent economic program perialist conflict, World War II sharply wages, but believed that a capitalist since 1932, proved that the economic whatsoever. In three of the eight years of underlined the fundamental difference economy could function at maximum recovery in the United States had been Roosevelt's first two terms, the federal between the reformist and revolutionary efficiency with a declining rate of return built on illusion" (The World in Depres­ budget deficit was smaller than in the last wings of the workers movement, provid­ on private investment and, especially, of sion, 1929-1939 [1986]). year of the Hoover administration. In ing the ultimate evidence of the treach­ interest. Indeed, he projected a time­ It was the Second World War. which 1938, when over 10 million workers­ ery of the New Deal coalition. While the "the euthanasia of the rentier"-when finally pulled the U.S. out of the Depres­ one-fifth of the labor force-were job­ Stalinist CP briefly opposed U.S. entry the rate of return on money, on accumu­ sion. Industrial output did not return to its less, the budget was actually balanced. into the war during the two-year period lated wealth, would be reduced to zero, 1929 level until 1940, when American Keynes himself recognized that the of the Hitler-Stalin pact, it reversed seeing this as "the most sensible way arms merchants began doing a booming economic policies of the New Deal were course following the June 1941 Nazi of gradually getting rid of many of business with Britain, then already at war totally ineffectual. In 1940, as the U.S. invasion of the Soviet Union, falsely the objectionable features of capitalism" identifying defense of the Soviet degen­ (The General Theory of Employment, erated workers state with support to Rus­ Interest and Money [1936]). 'LHE W4R TODAY [' PEOPLE"S.,"'''· WORLD sia's imperialist allies. Having earlier Again, this now appears' to be Bulgars Roused , ON'T',er aZI leup I '" _ .. _'"" , "'"'''' p""",,,,,- " proclaimed that "Communism Is Twenti­ unworldly liberal naivete, even utopian­ >\1I".llll< ~ I' ro,. Hum. AlloM,., eth Century Americanism," the CP was ism. It must be understood that these ;~;::~:~E~i~;,~:~~:,~,Bridges Proposes: at the forefront in enforcing the CIO words were written when Communists bureaucracy's no-strike pledge and in were leading "hunger marches" of coal .,-,._ ...... "., ...., __ ".. ,,_._-...... _ "'...... -'''-''-~'I' nr ._ ~.~

,,~,,_:'-'::::'::=::-:'::'~:::""""""NO " ,~, ,..- ..... -...... _ ....,---" __ ,_ II.,,_... .. , POSTWAR STRIKES rallying the workers to be cannon fodder miners and other unemployed workers for the imperialist war machine, while ;:f.:::~l7;J:'~T~= .;;;' -"Ii 5th Column Slinks HO()Sf'v<,it II ,\\( :HI~;'('s \\ a' '/lil( LO('al across the English Midlands. This is not screaming for the capitalist government to say that Keynes was a hypocrite or a :~f;,~~.}£:~·;.t:;; ~~~~~··I~:~;:::::'~~~~~7,~;;~~"~{e,~~",,,.I,~~' \\ ar anti I :.(:~~:~: ! ~~~::;:: to imprison leftist "fifth columnists" who demagogue. He genuinely believed his opposed the imperialist war. program was a good and practical alter­ ¥.~;;i;:::~:. :g~~~ZS~,~~i~:;[~:j?:r':'::;~~:~': ~~;;:':~ IOiaiilly WOlrlkelr Chief among these were the Trotsky­ native to what he called "state social­ ists, who held fast to the Leninist position ism." But in this he was expressing the of revolutionary defeatism against all the false consciousness of a bourgeois liberal imperialist powers, while calling for who believes that capitalists are willing unconditional military defense of the and can be directed to serve the greater Soviet Union. James P. Cannon, leader of interests of society. the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers New Deal Economics: Party (SWP), and 17 other leaders of the Myths and Realities SWP and of the Minneapolis Teamsters Supporting U.S. were impriso'ned by Roosevelt, the first Conventional wisdom, especially in imperialism in victims of the anti-communist Smith Act liberal circles, has it that the economic World War II, which was later to be used against the Stalinist CP helped policies of the Roosevelt government Stalinists themselves during the postwar break strikes, pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depres­ witchhunt. In an article titled "The Work­ sion and that these policies were inspired lauded A.bombing of Hiroshima and ers and World War II" (October 1942), by Keynes' theories. Both these proposi­ Nagasaki. Cannon wrote: tions are entirely false. "The war was declared on the very same When Roosevelt replaced Republican day that we were sentenced-December Herbert Hoover in the White House in 8, 1941. That certainly was a symbolic coincidence. Nothing could better sym­ early 1933, the Depression had just bot­ bolize our irreconcilable opposition to the tomed out. FDR's first term happened to with Germany. And it was not until 1943, was beginning a serious arms buildup in imperialist war, and to the capitalist state coincide with a modest recovery, which with the war economy at full throttle, that anticipation of its own entry into the war, preparing and waging the war; and noth­ nonetheless left output and employment the number of unemployed dropped he commented: ing, also, could better symbolize our ene­ mies' recognition of our attitude than this far below the levels of the late '20s. In below what it had been on the eve of the "The wealth-producing capacity which is unexpungeable fact: that they declared 1937-38, the U.S. economy was hit with 1929 crash. now going to waste in the United States is so far beyond our powers of measure­ war and sentenced the party leaders to another sharp downturn, as industrial S6phisticated liberal economists like ment that it is useless to hazard a figure prison on the same day." production plunged by one third in the Kindleberger argue that depressed con­ for it. The conclusion is that at all recent Throughout the war, the SWP fought space of a year. A standard history of the ditions were prolonged until the war times investment expenditure has been against the no-strike pledge and opposed Great Depression by American econo­ because the Roosevelt administration did on a scale which was hopelessly inade­ every effort by the Stalinists and liberals mist Charles Kindleberger points out: not carry out Keynes' prescription of quate to the problem .... Even if a com­ to suppress struggles for black equality in plete harmony between the [Roosevelt] "The steepest economic descent in the massive public works through deficit administration and private enterprise had the interest of the "war effort." In this, the history of the United States, which lost spending. In fact, FDR pursued no coher- achieved, momentarily, a satisfactory Trotskyists pursued the same "policy of economic recovery, it would not have the class struggle" which, as Cannon put endured more than a few months, with it, guided them in leading the 1934 Min­ institutions and the distribution of spend­ ing power what they are today .... neapolis Teamsters strikes to victory. Dia­ CORRECTIONS "It is, it seems, politically impossible metrically counterposed to this policy of for a capitalistic democracy to organize proletarian class independence was the In our supplement on the UPS on the Senate floor, "applaud[ing] expenditure on the scale necessary to Stalinists' abject class collaborationism. strike, "Unchain Labor's Power!" (re­ NPR's candor in admitting its mis­ make the grand experiment which would In 1939, on the eve of the war, CP head printed in WV No. 673, 5 September), take," on May 17. A picture caption in prove my case-except in war condi­ tions." [our emphasis] Earl Browder crowed: "We Communists we incorrectly referred to "Operation Part Two of "Enlightenment Rational­ helped to build the united progressive and Dixie," the last major attempt at trade­ ism and the Origins of Marxism" in -"The United States and the Keynes Plan," New Republic democratic front everywhere, and collab­ union organizing in the South, as tak­ that issue stated that Oliver Cromwell (29 July 1940) orated with Republicans as well as Dem­ ing place in the 1950s; it actually be­ dispersed the Long Parliament in Thus Keynes admitted that a capitalist ocrats and third party and labor group­ gan in 1946 and lasted only two years. 1663, whereas this occurred in 1653. "democracy" can use its full productive ings .... We are learning how to take our In "Fight to Free Mumia!" (WV No. In the article "Trotskyism vs. Na­ capacity only to produce weapons for the place within the traditional American 674, 19 September), we wrote that tionalism in Latin America" (WV No. mass murder of other peoples. Only when two-party system" (quoted in Maurice National Public Radio (NPR) canceled 678, 14 November), a photograph the U.S. entered World War II did Roose­ Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The planned broadcasts by Mumia Abu­ showing Lenin and Trotsky was velt finally embrace Keynes' program of American Communist Party During the Jamal in May 1994, "just days" after wrongly identified as the Second Con­ deficit spending for public works, the Second World War [1993]). During the then Senate leader Bob Dole threat­ gress of the Communist International; "public works" being battleships, bomb­ war, the CP took its place as front-line ened to cut off funding for NPR. In in fact the picture depicted them at a ers, tanks and, finally, A-bombs. During defenders of U.S. imperialism. fact, NPR announced the cancellation 1919 celebration of the second an­ the first eight years of the Roosevelt Especially after it became clear that on May 15 and Dole made his speech- niversary of the October Revolution. administration, the cumulative federal the U.S. and its allies were going to win budget deficit was $20 billion. In four the war, the bloated profits gained during 8 WORKERS VANGUARD the war provoked seething unrest on the This pledge was soon forgotten. At the by the racist police states in the South of black workers joining with communist shop floor. In the last years of the war same time, the bourgeoisie launched a which stripped blacks of every demo­ organizers, the CIO leaders scuttled there were thousands of small strikes vicious purge of newly "radical" CPers cratic right. Roosevelt's vice president "Operation Dixie" after only two years. carried out in defiance not only of the and other militants from the trade unions, from 1933 to 1940 was John Nance Gar­ Over the next decade the social basis Roosevelt-Truman government but also beheading the labor movement, and ex­ ner, a hardline white-supremacist from for the New Deal coalition was eroded of the AFL and CIO bureaucracies. And tending into other layers of society. Texas, an "open shop" state where the with the large-scale emigration of blacks in 1946, the greatest strike wave in union movement scarcely existed. The from the rural South to Northern and American history saw well over a hun­ The New Deal "Coalition": New Deal "coalition" literally embraced also Southern cities, undermining the dred million workdays lost to strikes, as From Stalinists to Klansmen both black Communist Party union orga­ Jiin Crow system of legally enforced more than four and a half million work­ In the mid-1950s, well-known liberal nizers in .the Midwest and white South-' racial segregation, which was based on ers manned picket lines. Contributing to historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a ern sheriffs who were members of the intimidation of isolated and impover­ the unprecedented labor upsurge was popular study, The Age of Reform: From local Klan chapter! ished rural black sharecroppers. The widespread fear that another sharp Bryan to FDR, which became a standard The price paid by blacks, as well as mass struggles for black equality in the depression, would come with the end of text in college courses on -modern U.S. white workers, for this class-collabora­ civil rights movement-first in the war production, as it had in 1920-2l. history. Here is Hofstadter's glowing tionist coalition of the labor bureaucracy, South, then in the North-exploded the In addition to these economic consid­ characterization of the New Deal: social democrats and Stalinists with Democratic Party coalition. Beginning erations, another factor entered into the 'The demands of a large and powerful Northern liberals and Dixiecrats was the in the late '60s, the Republican Party class. struggles of 1945-46. The victory labor movement, coupled with the inter­ continuation of racist terror in the South gained ascendancy as the party of the of the Red Army over Nazi Germany ests of the unemployed, gave the later and the failure to unionize this important "white backlash," including in the for­ evoked sympathy for Soviet Russia even New Deal a social-democratic tinge that region. In 1946, the CIO announced a merly solid Dixiecrat South. among relatively backward American had never before been present in Amer­ grandiose project grotesquely called ican reform movements .... American po­ The course of recent American history workers. And more left-wing workers litical reformism was fated henceforth to "Operation Dixie," sending 400 union demonstrates that there can be no signifi­ understood that key to the Soviet defeat take responsibility on a large scale for organizers to the South. But any attempt cant and lasting gains for the working of the most powerful capitalist state in social security, unemployment insurance, to confront the racial oppression dividing class unless the labor movement is in the Europe was the USSR's planned, social­ wages and hours, and housing." black and white workers in the heart of forefront of the struggle against the ized economy. Confronted with all this, Not once in Hofstadter's account of the Deep South would have aroused a oppression of blacks and other minor­ the liberal wing of the American ruling the New Deal is there any mention of the vicious backlash from the Dixiecrats in ities. And the fight for black equality class promised working people a bright oppression of black people. Here we the state houses and county seats and cannot be effective unless it is linked to new economic future, even enshrining in have a prime example of the liberal fal­ their fascist auxiliaries in the Ku Klux the struggle of labor against capital, ulti­ law, in the Employment Act of 1946, a sification of American history by omis­ Klan, in the process dissolving the New mately the struggle for a workers govern­ pledge "to promote maximum employ­ sion. Roosevelt and his successor Harry Deal coalition. With a rapid escalation of ment and a planned, socialist economy. ment, production and purchasing power." Truman supported and were supported the anti-Soviet Cold War and the spectre [TO BE CONTINUED]

strategic component of the proletariat, repeated calls for a "massive, legal, mists sought to channel outrage over the Mumia ... black workers will playa key role in the peaceful demonstration" on December 6, killing of Aaron Williams in San Fran­ (continued/rom page 12) socialist revolution which is needed to a PDC spokesman at an August 23 plan­ cisco into a call to fire one of the cops root out racial oppression; and to win the ning meeting in San Francisco said: responsible. This was echoed by the united-front defense actions for Jamal proletariat to revolutionary conscious­ "Does Socialist Action believe that any­ mayor himself, who hoped that sacrificing and all class-war prisoners; we aim to suf­ ness, it is necessary to inculcate the one is going to stand up and argue for an one "bad apple" would make the system of fuse the working class with the con­ understanding that the fight for black illegal, violent demonstration? Of course repression more efficient and "credible." sciousness of its histoJic interests in fight­ not. No one who wants Jamal's freedom freedom is central to the struggle for the would argue such a thing. It means that Socialist Action exhibits a tOllching ing for all of labor and the oppressed emancipation of labor itself. what Socialist Action is promising in faith in the racist, strikebreaking cops as against the entire capitalist system. We advance is a mobilization subordinated to allies of the oppressed. In Canada, where seek to forge a revolutionary workers Class-Struggle Defense vs. bourgeois liberalism-or to put it another the December 6 protests are being spon­ party modeled on the one built by Bol­ Reformist Appeals way, your goal is a demonstration that is 'safe' for [San Francisco mayor) Willie sored by the Socialist Action group shevik leader V I. Lenin, who wrote in his We welcome the diverse efforts that Brown and his fellow Democratic Party there, SA leader Barry Weisleder last 1902 book What Is To Be Done? that for have been made by many organizations buddies. We believe that the indepen­ year wrote how Toronto cops "were proletarian revolutionaries: other than our own, particularly since dence of the working class is crucial in friendly" to striking public employees "[The) ideal should not be the trade­ 1995, on Jamal's behalf. But whether lib­ the fight against all racist injustice, and and "in many instances acted as benign union secretary, but the tribune of the that independence is gutted by reliance people, who is able to react to every eral opponents of the death penalty or on the Democratic Party. mediators" (Socialist Action [Canada], manifestation of tyranny and oppression, reformist "socialists," their starting point "This doesn't mean we argue to exclude Spring-Summer 1996). Would SA also no matter where it appears ... who is able is far removed from our Marxist perspec­ Democratic Party politicians. We favor describe as "benign" the U.S. Fraternal to generalise all these manifestations tive. Seeking to pressure the bourgeois the broadest participation possible in the fight to free Jamal. If they agree with the Order of Police, which has organized and produce a single picture of police courts to be 'just," they steer their efforts violence and capitalist exploitation; who demands of the demonstration, fine. But nationally to push Jamal's execution and is able to take advantage of every event, toward calling for a "fair trial"-as if Socialist Action's desire for their partici­ which torments his supporters? however small, in order to set forth Mumia could ever get a fair trial under pation becomes political capitulation by As opposed to SA's liberal, exclusion­ before all his socialist convictions and this rigged, racist "justice" system. In a assuring these forces of the demonstra­ ist policies, our comrades at the August tion's 'respectability.' At the same time, his democratic demands, in order to similar vein, the "Campaign to End the 23 planning meeting argued for a genuine clarify for all and everyone the world­ it means you are limiting the participa­ historic significance of the struggle for Death Penalty" launched by the Inter­ tion of those with a real stake in the fight united-front demonstration-based on the emancipation of the proletariat." national Socialist Organization (ISO) to free Jamal-leftists, minority youth "unity in action, freedom of criticism"­ Our fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal echoes liberal criticisms of the death and others who do not subscribe to this around the demands "Free Mumia! Abol­ penalty. Both the ISO and its "Cam­ class-collaborationist political vantage ish the racist death penalty!" There are and abolish the death penalty is part of point. In fact, you imply the exclusion of our perspective of winning workers to the paign" signed a leaflet last year which those whom the bourgeoisie may deem many and sundry organizations offering understanding that the bourgeois state, complained that "executing prisoners is neither 'peaceful' nor 'Iegal'." their own ways of fighting on behalf of with its cops and courts, is not some significantly more expensive than keep­ Socialist Action's call for "peaceful, Mumia. Well and good. For our part, we "neutral" agency which serves society as ing them in prison for the rest of their legal" protests is a code phrase for exclu­ will continue to focus on mobilizing the a whole but rather exists to defend the lives." Clinton and the Republicans like­ sion of groups to their left. During power of labor through class-struggle, class rule and profits of the capilalists wise point to how expensive death sen­ the Vietnam antiwar movement of the non-sectarian defense, which is the best against those they exploit. It is crucially tences are as they seek to put a stop to 1960s and early '70s, the reformist hope for saving Mumia Abu-Jamal from necessary to overcome; through inte­ "~ndless appeals" by death row inmates! Socialist Workers Party-whose cadre legal lynching and to free him to carryon grated class struggle, the racial divisions The ISO "socialists" implicitly endorse then included the current SA leader­ his work as the "voice of the voiceless" fostered by the bourgeoisie to weaken the the grotesque "alternath:e" of life sen­ ship-used that call to cement a class­ from outside prison walls. The fight to entire working class. Black oppression, tences without parole-a living death for collaborationist alliance with Democratic free Mumia is part and parcel of the the forcible segregation of the masses of inmates-put forward by bourgeois Party politicians. This bloc was sealed struggle to forge the revolutionary work­ black people at the bottom of this society, reformers. through bloody physical attacks against ers party that is the most essential tool is intrinsic to American capitalism. As a Most recently, the reformist Social­ radical leftists, including the Spartacist for the emancipation of labor and the ist Action (SA) group has initiated League, who fought for the victory of the oppressed. the "December 6 Mobilization to Free Vietnamese workers and peasants against Mumia Abu-Jamal," kicked off by an U.S. imperialism. These days, Socialist * * * August 16 rally in San Francisco which Action's chief role is as waterboys for FUNDS FOR MUMIA'S LEGAL DE­ drew some 3,000 people and raised the trade-union bureaucracy. In the 1983 FENSE ARE URGENTLY NEEDED! ...i Onthe $20,000 for Jamal's legal costs. Demon­ Greyhound strike, prominent SA sup­ If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ~ United Front strations are being called for December 6 porter Jeff Mackler helped to police a turns down his appeal, the next battle­ Ii;.. ======in San Francisco and other cities in North support rally in San Francisco in order to ground on the legal front will be in v :! America and Europe in conjunction with keep picketers away from the struck bus the federal courts, involving massive II< IIrtpnnlui a "People's International Tribunal for Jus­ ~ ¥oung'.onltrlllru<;l terminal. new costs. Contributions for Mumia's ." lIU1k-trn""'J,19;>6 < tice for Mumia Abu-Jamal" in Philadel­ Our comrade also addressed the refor­ legal defense should be made pay­ phia initiated by Concerned Family ~and mist slogan "Stop police brutality," say­ able to the Bill of Rights Founda­ Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The rallies ing: "Only liberals and those who wish to tion (earmarked "Mumia Abu-Jamal ~ sponsored by Socialist Action-called foster illusions in the capitalist system of Legal Defense") and mailed to: Com­ around the demands "Free Mumia Abu­ injustice believe this system will 'stop' mittee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Jamal! Abolish the death penalty! Stop unleashing their police on workers and Amsterdam Ave., No. 115, New York, police brutality!"--are not genuine the oppressed. We will take no part in NY 10023-5001. Contact the PDC­ A Spartacist pamphlet united fronts but rather an extension of lulling the working class and oppressed New York: P.O. Box 99, Canal Street originally printed in 1976 as SA's reformist politics. into believing that it can be any other way Station; New York, NY 10013-0099, Young Communist Bulletin No.3 Even as we encouraged others to take under capitalism." While we fight to phone (212) 406-4252; Chicago: P.O. up $1 (16 pages) Jamal's cause, we realized that many mobilize powerful social protest against Box 802867, Chicago, IL 60680-2867, of these groups would seek to silence acts of police brutality, we know that the phone (312) 454-4931; San Francisco Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist PUb. Co., Box 1377 GPO, and exd ude the revol utionary Marxists cops will necessarily resort to choke­ Bay Area: P.O. Box 77462, San Fran­ New York, NY 10116 in order to keep protests "safe" for Dem­ holds, pepper spray, frame-ups and cold­ cisco, CA 94107-0462, phone (510) ocratic Party politicians. Pointing to SA's blooded killings. Earlier this year, refor- 839-0852 .• 28 NOVEMBER 1997 9 idol Carey to the wolves when the feds started breathing down his neck last sum­ Teamsters ... mer. Only two months ago, Socialist (continued from page 1) Worker (26 September) was still bleating, "Anyone guilty of wrongdoing-includ­ the labor movement! ing Carey-should be held accountable." The government's sinister intervention Moreover, the ISO has long boosted into the biggest union in the country, just the "rank-and-file" Teamsters for a Dem­ months before the national truckers' con­ ocratic Union (TDU), which is the tract expires, is but the latest chapter in an UPS picket line organizational mainstay of the Carey escalating offensive to cripple the power in Rhode Island wing of the IBT bureaucracy and an of the unions to challenge the bosses' attacked by cops. architect of government intervention in profit margins. Immediately after the Successful the union. In a June-July special edition Teamsters walkout, Democratic president Teamsters strike of its paper directed at UPS workers, the Clinton ~mposed a strikebreaking "cool­ infuriated bosses, ISO boasted, "Socialists played a key ing off' period against Amtrak railway spurred renewed role in organizing TDU." Indeed, TDU workers and banned a threatened strike by attacks on labor movement. leader Pete Camarata is a prominent ISO UPS pilots. In the Senate, Utah Republi­ supporter. And after the strike, Socialist call Orrin Hatch launched hearings into a Worker (29 August) urged "Teamsters proposed "Freedom from Union Violence activists" to join this "reform group" in Act" which would open up entire unions order "to build a fighting union." to federal prosecution for strikers' defense But from its inception, the TDU has of picket lines. In Ohio, a federal appeals done the bulk of its fighting not on strike court outlawed "union shop" clauses in Carey has now himself been bitten by the paper support. Labor's power must be picket lines but in courtrooms and Jus­ labor contracts, a move aimed at rolling feds. Marxists stand for the complete and actively molJilized to free Jamal. But the tice Department offices. Faced with a the clock back to the "right to work" days unconditional independence of the labor pro-capitalist union tops refuse to do so. purge threat by the "old guard" bureauc­ when workers had no right to organize. movement from the bosses' state. Sweeney makes this clear in a letter to racy of the Detroit local in 1977, the What is behind this frenzied response the Post (20 November), insisting that he Red-Baiters Run Riot TDU ran to the federal courts for a writ by America's rulers is not simply the rel­ has "not been involved in any way" in against the union. Ten years later, the atively modest economic gains won by The government assault on labor has Jamal's cause. TDU literally wrote the blueprint for the UPS workers in August. What stunned been accompanied by a hysterical union­ In our WV supplement (27 August) on government plan to "reorganize" the the bourgeoisie was not only the strike's hating campaign in the bourgeois press, the UPS strike, we stressed: "If the labor Teamsters, helping to make the draco­ widespread popularity but also that its including a surreal attempt to revive the movement is to be revitalized, it must nian Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt main demand hit at one of the chief postwar McCarthyite "red scare." Boost­ actively take up the fight against racist Organizations Act (RICO) the weapon of mechanisms. for the fabulous mushroom­ ing Hatch's proposed anti-union legisla­ terror and champion all those victimized choice for government intervention in ing in corporate profits over recent tion, the Wall Street Journal has featured by the capitalist rulers." This requires the unions. TDU spokesman Ken Pafl years. Like the strike against Bay a series of articles vituperating against a sharp political struggle within the wrote at the time: "The RICO statute Area Rapid Transit later in August, "union coercion," even denouncing Carey unions against the Sweeneys, Careys and provides for 'reorganization' of any which was scuttled by the union tops, the for a miserly $100 contribution to the Hoffas-the bourgeoisie's labor lieuten­ enterprise found racketeer-controlled. Teamsters took aim at the multi-tier legal defense of Southern California ants-who shackle the unions to their Two months ago TDU sent the Justice wage system which, along with other Latino Teamster Jesse Acuna, who was class enemy, embracing and promoting Department a detailed plan for such a measures, has been used to massively thrown behind bars for defending his the interests of racist U.S. imperialism. reorganization" (Washington Post, 21 ratchet up the rate of exploitation picket line during the 1994 national truck­ The fight to emancipate labor and all the June 1987). This led directly to the 1989 by paying young, minority and women ers strike. This was followed by a red­ oppressed can only go forward in the consent decree which placed the IBT workers far less than their co-workers. baiting broadside against Carey, AFL-CIO struggle to forge a multiracial, class­ under the thumb of the capitalist govern­ An op-ed piece by a leading Wall Street president John Sweeney and other union struggle workers party which acts as a ment. Today Paff screams for the feds to economist in the New York Times (24 officials for supposedly allying with tribune of the people, in counterposition carry out "as full an investigation of August) only days after the UPS strike 1960s radicals and "East German secret to the partner parties of capital. Hoffa as they did of Carey" (New York warned of a "worker backlash" against police" spies, denouncing the ardently Times, 19 November). "years of corporate cost cutting that has pro-Democratic Party Sweeney in partic­ ISO: Justice Department Socialists While sometimes distancing itselffrom been directed primarily at the nation's ular for purportedly forming "alliances the TDU, the ISO has been utterly politi­ labor force." with a range of left-wing groups" and for In an article following last December's cally complicit in this class treason which The industrial magnates and Wall being a member of the tame, reformist Teamsters elections, we noted: "Lacking has aided and abetted the bourgeoisie's Street financiers know that the enormous and stoutly anti-communist Democratic any confidence in the revolutionary decades-long vendetta against the Team­ profits in which they have reveled come Socialists of America (Wall Street Jour­ capacity of the proletariat, the reformist sters. Shortly after the government con­ from squeezing working people and nal, 17 October). left joins with the liberals in looking sent decree, Socialist Worker (January minorities to the breaking point. With an Rupert Murdoch's rabidly right-wing to the capitalist state to 'clean up' 1991) blithely reported: "In concert with arrogance augmented by their own self­ New York Post (13 November) chimed in the unions" (WV No. 661, 7 February). the government-forced to curb the serving myth that "communism is dead," with its own gutter-press fulminations A quintessential example of such "Jus­ openly corrupt aspects of the union-the the capitalist rulers have ripped up one against the AFL-CIO's "Hard Left Turn" tice Department socialists" is the Inter­ reform movement under TDU's leader­ social program after another which pro­ away from "Joe Six-Pack" to "Politically­ national Socialist Organization (ISO), ship has gone a long way toward leveling vided some minimal lifeline for the poor Correct Causes." The author of this dia­ which has promoted Carey through every the playing field for those seeking union and the ghetto and barrio masses. For tribe, one Eric Breindel, has in the past government takeover. move and court suit. offices." And only this year, in its UPS some two decades now, the bourgeoisie denounced the Times Obituary page for Hailing Carey's re-election as a "wel­ special edition, the ISO hailed the con­ has been riding roughshod over the concealing the Communist connections come victory over old-guard forces who sent decree as a "breakthrough," favor­ unions, taking as a given the "labor of the deceased! Breindel's evidence for represent the Teamsters' corrupt, mob­ ably describing how "the government set peace" enforced by the compliant AFL­ a "hard left turn" by the union tops is the dominated past," the ISO's Socialist up an Independent Review Board to mon­ CIO misleaders. cosmetic change made to the AFL-CIO Worker (3 January) breathed not a word itor the Teamsters first-ever democratic Recently, with West Europe erupting constitution at its latest convention, about the fact that this "victory" came at vote for the union presidency." Among in huge strikes against similqr attacks, replacing its explicit ban on Communists the behest of the federal government, the members of this "independent" the U.S. capitalist class, which had con­ with more "generic" language against which supervised every aspect of the review board was former FBI and CIA vinced itself that it couldn't happen here, . those who promote "authoritarianism, election. head William Webster, a member of the began to cast a nervous glance over its totalitarianism, terrorism"-i.e., post­ Now, Socialist Worker (7 November) board of directors of the union-busting shoulder. Then came the UPS strike. Soviet era code words for militants and carries an article headlined "Why Gov­ Pinkerton private cops! Now the bosses are furiously striking "reds." ernment Intervention Hurts Unions," in The ISO occasionally talks out of the back. A short article on the ruling against The Post also lifted a page from the which leading ISO spokesman Lee Sustar left side of its mouth. But in practice, Carey in the Business section of the New viciously racist Willie Horton campaign opines that '''non-political' interventions these reformists deny the fundamental York Times (23 November) noted that the pushed by George Bush in his 1988 pres­ to oust corruption-like the federal Marxist understanding that the capitalist "nation's labor movement, on the ropes idential bid, running a photo of Sweeney judge's oversight of the Teamsters-are state is an enemy of the working class and since the Reagan Administration deliv­ next to one of death row political pris­ ultimately designed to limit workers' oppressed and that this apparatus of ered a knockout punch to striking air oner Mumia Abu-Jamal above a scurri­ ability to build fighting, democratic repression cannot be pressured to serve traffic controllers, seemed on the verge lous caption reading "Cop-killer and unions." We can only recall the adage the interests of the workers but must be of a comeback" with the UPS ~trike. The labor hero?" The cause of this heroic often cited by Oscar Wilde: Hypocrisy is swept away through socialist revolution. article went on to crow: "Now a court­ black journalist, who was falsely con­ the homage that vice pays to virtue. So As part of our fight to forge a revolution­ appointed union monitor has delivered victed because of his outspoken advo­ craven is the social-democratic ISO in ary workers party to lead the proletariat his own punch." cacy of the oppressed, has resonated accepting the dictates of capitalist "jus­ to power, we seek to build a class­ To defeat the growing barrage of anti­ among unionists and garnered significant tice" that it was prepared to throw even its struggle leadership of the unions imbued union attacks requires a leadership com­ with this understanding of the capitalist mitted to a program of class struggle, not state. As Leon Trotsky wrote in his 1940 class collaboration. The union bureauc­ The fight for Teamster reform •• article, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of racy sees "allies" in the agencies of the RON CAREY I. known •• • to clean up the umoo. in tru5leeships under control of SOC'.S' ••-- Imperialist Decay": reform I.. der In the T•• m. ""rDU was opposed ro govern· the International union. .1 Iii;:, .. class enemy-the government, the cops, stereo mmt control of WIIoru:· Camarato In 1996 the old guard banded ~ ~ "It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the the courts-and chains the working class But t~e fight for reform in the said.. together behind Jimmy J:loffa Jr, 0''''' er concrete conditions existing in the trade union loes back to the 1975 for- Instead taking over, the govern- tc. trade on the name of his father, • J to the Democratic and Republican parties matiOD 'orTeamstcn for a Decent fl!-cot sct up an Ind.ependent Re- the former Teamster president J IJ I 199 unions of every given country in order to CODtract (TDC). which .parked. VlOW Board to monItor the Team- who disappeared in 1975. une U y 7 mobilize the masses, not only against the of capital. While Hoffa (braintrusted by a natiODal. might drivers' strike the st= fim-ever(kmocratic vote for TDU backed Pm Min Special Edition following year. the uruoo _dency. . ._ bourgeoisie, but also against the totalitar­ follower of fascistic crackpot Lyndon TDC)inked up with other Careywon»£ i ..... lilLlUg 0 tn ian regime within the trade unions them­ LaRouche) screams for even stronger group! of Teamsters across tbe ISO hails TDU, COUDtry to form Teamsters for a selves and against the leaders enforcing government intervention, Carey was cat­ Democratic Union (fDU). which has been this regime. The primary slogan for this Pete Camarata, then a freight apulted to the union presidency in elec­ driver who bad led a wildcat in instrumental struggle is: complete and unconditional tions run lock, stock and barrel by the in bringing independence of the trade unions in rela­ tion to the capitalist state. This means a feds. He who lives by the sword dies by capitalist state into Teamsters struggle to turn the trade.unions into the the sword: having let the anti-union organs of the broad exploited masses and union. enemy in the front door in the first place, not the organs of a labor aristocracy.". 10 WORKERS VANGUARD wan Strait in a provocation against Bei­ Cliff's SWP. .. jing, the Cliffites claimed that "China's claim to Taiwan is a colonialist one. We ( continued from page 4) would oppose any Chinese invasion of reunification of Germany-a red Ger­ Taiwan as an act of imperialist aggres­ many of workers councils as part of a sion" (Socialist Review, April 1996). Socialist United States of Europe. While The SWP's support to their own bour­ we took a side, an active part in the fight geoisie's bloody troops in Ireland and to defend and extend the gains of the screaming opposition to China's self­ international proletariat, Cliff's "third defence against imperialist aggression campists" backed imperialism, refusing exposes their hypocrisy and pseudo­ to oppose counterrevolution in the East. socialist pretensions! This class treason internationally is The origins of the Cliff tendency as reflected domestically in the SWP's renegades from Trotskyism come back to record of scabbing and union-busting. haunt the SWP today in the struggle Clif( called the great British miners against the South Korean dictatorship strike of 1984-85 prime evidence of his and the terminal crisis of Stalinist rule in theory of the "downturn" in working­ North Korea. Against the SWP's support class struggle, alibiing the Labour Party to "democratic imperialism," we Sparta­ and TUC who were knifing the strike. We cists fight for the revolutionary reunifica­ fought to spread the strike to other key tion of Korea through a proletarian polit­ industries; Cliff bragged about SWPers North Korean capital of Pyongyang devastated by U.S. bombing during ical revolution in the North against the crossing miners' picket lines: "We have 1950-53 Korean War. Tony Cliff was expelled from Trotskyist movement for grotesquely deformed Stalinist regime, steelworkers in Redcar who cross picket publicly opposing defense of North Korea, China against imperialism. uniting with the powerful proletariat in lines. We have three steelworkers in the South to wage a social revolution to Scunthorpe, they cross picket lines ... " on earth, the Labour government the the brink of counterrevolution, which rip the wealth out of the hands of the (Tony Cliff, speech at Conway Hall in SWP campaigned for is carrying out its would mean bloody chaos and immiser­ South Korean capitalists and bring down London, 23 August 1984). Apparently vicious and promised attacks on workers, ation for a quarter of the world's popu­ the dictatorship through the rule of demo­ this holds appeal for Pete Camarata, minorities and immigrants for the benefit lation. Capitalist counterrevolution in cratically elected workers soviets. We leading light of the American Teamsters of City bankers. Blair's government drew China would heighten the imperialist fight for the withdrawal of the 35,000 for a Democratic Union (TDU) which is first blood in Ireland, playing the Orange scramble for the spoils and redivision of U.S. troops there, whose military power a darling of the American ISO. This card against .the oppressed Catholic the vast markets and resources already props up the bloody Seoul regime and is "opposition" in the Teamsters supported minority in the North. The military prov­ being pJundered by imperialism. These a mortal threat to the deformed workers the election of Ron Carey, the "reformer" ocations by Blair took place in the midst inter-imperialist rivalries have the very state in North Korea and to working peo­ who gained office by bringing the capi­ of the SWP's Marxism '97. But while the real possibility of leading to shooting ple throughout East Asia. talist government directly into the inter­ Spartacist League immediately issued a wars, and this in the epoch of nuclear To understand what kind of party the nal affairs of the union, the better to statement protesting this provocation, de­ weapons. "Whither China?" is literally a SWP is, it is necessary to recognise that bust the union. In fact, in 1987 the TDU manding the immediate and uncondi­ question whose answer holds the fate of there is a yawning gulf between the literally wrote-and sent to the Justice tional withdrawal of British troops, the humanity in the balance. SWP's claim to be inheritors of Bolshe­ Department-the blueprint for the gov­ SWP did nothing to mobilise against their There have been massive strikes vism and their actual programme and ernment plan to "reorganise" the union. new Labour rulers. Indeed, the SWP's against the impoverishment and immiser­ practice, which are social-democratic to We say: Government hands off the Team­ capitulation to Labour has a long, dirty ation of "market reforms," but time is the core. Hence they fear criticism from sters! And we oppose all state inter­ history on the Irish question. When in short for the Chinese proletariat. The dis­ within their own ranks, and use lies, vention in the unions. In contrast, the 1969 a Labour government sent imperial­ aster of capitalist restoration can only be bureaucratic exclusionism, and violence Cliffites have made themselves the cheer­ ist British troops to Northern Ireland, averted through the acquisition of rev­ against the Spartacist League in an leaders for, and in some cases the direct the Cliffites supported it with the gro­ olutionary political consciousness and attempt to censor the authentic politics of agents of, capitalist state intervention tesque justification that it would provide the mobilisation of the Chinese workers Trotskyism. Ironically, in this political in the union movement. The Cliffites' a "breathing space" for the oppressed behind the Trotskyist programme of pro­ cowardice and recourse to violence the touching faith in the "neutrality" of the Catholics! The SWP as a self-proclaimed letarian political revolution, to oust the Stalinophobic SWP apes Stalin'sj>uppres­ bourgeois state to regulate "democracy" "socialist alternative" to Labour is noth­ pro-imperialist Stalinist bureaucracy and sion of left opposition. We believe in in the labour movement is of a piece with ing but a pink fig leaf for British imperi­ fight for socialist revolutions throughout the clash of opinion in open political de­ their appeal to cops and prison guards. alism! As opposed to crawling for Asia and beyond. ,bate. Those who joined the SWP looking Rejecting Lenin's clear description of Labour, the Spartacist League follows But for the SWP, China is just another for a revolutionary party, who don't want the capitalist state's "armed bodies of Lenin's approach-to split the base from "state capitalist" society, and once again to spend the rest of their days voting men," the SWP whines, "Are All Coppers the top of this bourgeois workers party they scab on the struggle to defend the for, pressurising and petitioning Labour, Really Bastards?" (Socialist Worker, 8 and build an authentic Bolshevik Party­ workers' gains from rapacious imperial­ ought to examine the programme and February). which in Britain requires irreconcilable ism. After all, if you believe Cliff's fic­ actions of Trotskyism as embodied in the Today, Blair's Labour Party also opposition to all forms of Labourism. tion that the capitalists are already in International Communist League today. rejoices in the destruction of the USSR Today, the threat of capitalist counter­ power, then there's simply nothing there We stand with James Cannon, founder and pushes the imperialist myth that revolution looms over the Chinese de­ for the working class to defend. Scandal­ of American Trotskyism, who said, "We this means the "death of communism." formed workers state. Decades of Stalin­ ously, last year the SWP sided with the are the party of the Russian Revolution," This is the Labour government whose ist misrule have severely undermined political heirs of Chiang Kai-shek who and struggle to reforge Trotsky's Fourth election the SWP proclaimed itself to be what remains of the planned, collectiv­ today run the brutal. capitalist regime in International, necessary to fight for new "over the moon" about. Meanwhile back ised economy and have brought China to Taiwan. As U.S. warships plied the Tai- October Revolutions._

nuclear horror on the world, incinerating Nation liberals complained: "Although wrote last month in "U.S. Gunboat Diplo­ Iraq ... over 200,000 Japanese civilians in the the United States is still the world's only macy in the Persian Gulf' (WV No. 677, (continued from page 1 ) atom-bomb- attacks on Hiroshima and superpower, to others it looks like Gul­ 31 October): "One thing is certain: con­ Nagasaki at the close of World War II. liver tied down by Lilliputian lobbyists tinued imperialist domination can only which can reach any capital in the region, During the Gulf War, as liberals and and Congressional Yahoos." With a Dem­ mean further national oppression of the and beyond. Furthermore, the U.S. was reformist "socialists" looked to the United ocrat in the White House, these liberals peoples of the region, intensified exploi­ only too happy to supply Saddam's Iraq Nations or other imperialist agencies to want a more aggressive imperialist pol­ tation of the proletariat and sharpened with high-grade weapons in the squalid, pressure the U.S. to "bring the boys icy, like starving a few hundred thousand interimperialist rivalries." The Interna­ 1980-88 border war with Iran, which was home," the Spartacist League and Spar­ more Iraqi children, perhaps? tional Communist League is committed also fed with weapons by the U.S. tacus Youth Clubs called to "Defeat The race by the major capitalist powers to reforging Trotsky'S Fourth Interna­ The obscene, lying hypocrisy of the U.S. imperialism! Defend Iraq!" While to recarve the Near East and Central tional as the world party of socialist rev­ U.S. crusade against Saddam Hussein unconditionally opposing imperialist war Asia into zones of imperialist exploita­ olution, linking the struggle for the eman­ was highlighted during the Gulf War moves, 'we gave absolutely no political tion, which greatly exacerbates national! cipation of the toilers of the Near East to when CNN correspondent Peter Arnett support to the Iraqi capitalist regime, ethnic conflicts, is just one example of the fight for socialist revolutions around reported on a bombing attack that de­ which has secured its rule through the sharpened rivalries that ultimately the world, especially against the main stroyed an infant formula and powdered anti-Communist massacres, anti-labor re­ threaten military conflagration. As we enemy of humanity-U.S. imperialism._ milk plant on the outskirts of Bagh­ pression and bloody subjugation of the dad. For truthfully describing this atroc­ Kurdish people. It is the task of the ity, Arnett was condemned by the White Iraqi proletariat, leading behind it the SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY House, which manufactured the tale that oppressed women and ethnic, national National Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116' (212) 732-7860 the factory was really a "biological and religious minorities, to sweep away weapons plant." U.S. terror bombing the bloody regime of Saddam Hussein Boston Los Angeles Oakland raids continued under Democrat Clinton, through socialist revolution. Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 29574, Los Feliz Sta. Box 29497 killing yet more Iraqi men, women and Some who supported UN ganctions Cambridge, MA 02139 Los Angeles, CA 90029 Oakland, CA 94604 children. against Iraq in 1991 as an "alternative" (617) 666-9453 (213) 380-8239 (510) 839-0851 Besides demonizing the targets of U.S. to outright military attack today bemoan Chicago New York San Francisco imperialist aggrandizement, the govern­ the fact that America's erstwhile "allies" Box 6441, Main PO Box 3381, Church St. Sta. Box 77494 ment and media lies are meant to obscure are no longer bending before U.S. inter­ Chicago, IL 60680 New York, NY 10008 San Francisco, CA 94107 the fact that it is the American capitalist ests. A recent editorial in the left­ (312) 454-4930 (212) 267-1025 (415) 777-9367 ruling class that is the biggest purveyor of liberal Nation (l December) joined in death on this planet. The U.S. has enor­ the imperialist propaganda blitz against mous stores of chemical and biological the "bloodthirsty dictator" in Iraq and TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA weapons at its disposal, not to mention yearned for the days of the Gulf War, Toronto Vancouver the largest nuclear arsenal on the face of when U.S. leaders "got whatever they Box 7198, Station A Box 2717, Main P.O. the earth. And U.S. imperialism, under_ wanted at the U.N." Churning out the Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 the Democratic Truman administration, kind of jingoist rhetoric usually asso­ (416) 593-4138 (604) 687-0353 has been the only state power to unleash ciated with the Pat Buchanan crowd, the 28 NOVEMBER 1997 11 W,/lIlE/IS "/1,,,/11) Free Mumia-Abolish the Racist Death Penalty! For Non-Sectarian, Class-Struggle Defense! A new stage is approaching in the of social forces in his defense. And we Sacco and Vanzetti, the ILD followed struggle for freedom for black journalist have succeeded in this, making Mumia's "the policy of the class struggle," which and death row political prisoner Mumia struggle known to trade unionists, death "puts the center of gravity in the protest Jen Abu-Jamal. The Pennsylvania Supreme penalty abolitionists and many others, not movement of the workers of America Mumia Abu-Jamal Court currently has before it Mumia's only in the U.S. but internationally. The and the world. It puts all faith in the appeal of a 1995 ruling by "hanging PDC has organized united-front actions power oj the masses and no faith what­ and others-including Jamal's fellow judge" Albert Sabo, who turned down where all organizations agreeing with the ever in the justice of the courts. While writers-fought for his life. Trade unions favoring all possible legal proceedings, it Jamal's Post-Conviction Relief petition to demands to save Mumia from execution calls for agitation, publicity, demonstra­ from throughout the U.S. to Brazil and overturn his 1982 frame-up conviction and to abolish the racist death penalty can tions-organized protest on a national Japan spoke out on his behalf. A number and death sentence for the killing of speak in their own harne, carry their own , and international scale. It calls for unity of heads of state, including French presi­ a Philadelphia cop. New evidence of dent Jacques Chirac and South Africa's Mumia's innocence keeps coming to Nelson Mandela, also demanded that light, but this carries no weight on the Jamal not be put to death. rigged scales of capitalist "justice." Even As the scheduled date of execution to win a new trial for Jamal, much less neared, the PDC initiated emergency to secure his freedom, would require united-front protests, centered on bring­ breaking through the racist wall of cops, ing to bear the power of organized labor, prosecutors and judges who have made in New York City, Chicago and Oakland entire careers through suppressing evi­ as well as in Canada and Australia. The dence, intimidating witnesses and other­ protests drew hundreds of trade unionists wise conspiring to railroad Jamal to the and were endorsed by dozens of unions death chamber. There is every reason to and labor officials, as well as a wide range expect the Court to uphold Sabo. In that of other organizations. Under· the watch­ event, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge word of the united front, "march sepa­ has already vowed to sign a new death rately, strike together," the protests were warrant. based on unity·in action while allowing Mumia's fight for life and freedom has for the free debate of contending strate­ reverberated among opponents of racist gies and programs which is vital to oppression and injustice everywhere. A advancing the consciousness of the work­ former Black Panther Party spokesman ing class, anti-racist youth and others. and later a supporter of the Philadelphia The outpouring of protests was the cru­ MOVE group, Jamal was targeted for cial factor in winning a stay of execution death because he dared to speak out for Mumia in August 1995. At the time, against police brutality and for the im­ Mumia issued a message to all those who poverished and dispossessed of this soci­ had participated in the protests, urging: ety. Like Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), who August 1995: POC initiated labor-centered, united-front protests in New York "Let us utilize this pl'ecious time to build finally won the overturn of his frame­ City (above) and Bay Area, part of international outcry which averted a stronger and broader movement, to not scheduled execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. up murder conviction after 27 years in 'stay' one execution, but to halt them all!" prison, Mumia was targeted by the FBI's To put a final halt to the grisly workings deadly COINTELPRO operation, direct­ of capitalism's machinery of death-be ed against the Black Panthers and others they the guardians of death row or the who fought against this racist capitalist cops who operate as "j udge, jury and exe­ government (see the 1995 Partisan De­ cutioner" in gunning down minority fense Committee pamphlet, The Frame­ youth on the streets-requires sweeping Up of Mumia Abu-Jamal). away this entire system based on exploi­ Jamal's case throws a spotlight on the tation and oppression. The social power barbaric, racist death penalty, a form of to do that lies in the hands of the multi­ institutionalized state terror directly racial working class, with its numbers, descended in the U.S. from the system of organization and discipline-and most black chattel slavery. The death penalty is importantly, its capacity to bring the the ultimate sanction employed by this wheels of the profit system to a grinding repressive system as it seeks to contain halt. the explosive pressures generated by the Integrated unions representing mil­ growing gap between a handful of filthy lions of workers have gone on record in rich and those on the bottom. The parties support of Jamal. But these millions have of capital, Democrats and Republicans, not been mobilized in action to combat join in pushing racist "law and order" this racist frame-up. The responsibility campaigns aimed at intensifying capital­ for that lies with the pro-capitalist trade­ ist repression, including through the gro­ union misleaders, who fear calling their tesque speedup on death rows across the signs and banners and distribute their lit­ and solidarity of all workers on this members into action to defend their eco­ country. As Marxists, we are unequivocal erature. These protests were infus~d with burning issue, regardless of conflicting nomic interests, much less in defense of opponents of the death penalty as punish­ the understanding that the social pqwer of views on other questions." blacks, immigrants and others who are ment-we do not accord the state the the multiracial working class must be cast off to starve in the streets or locked right to determine who lives or dies. mobilized in Jamal's defense and in International Protest Stayed away in prison hellholes. The labor From the time the Spartacist League defense of all the oppressed. the Executioner'S Hand bureaucracy seeks to tie the working and Partisan Defense Committee first Our non-sectarian, class-struggle de­ Jamal's powerful voice became known class to the interests of their exploiters took up the fight to save Mumia's life fense work stands in the tradition of the to millions around the world through his through the agency of the capitalist polit­ more than ten years ago, we have sought early International Labor Defense (ILD), 1995 book, Live from Death Row, and ical parties, especially Clinton's Demo­ to assist him in pursuing every possible the American arm of the "International the scathing indictments of racist oppres­ crats. During the last presidential elec­ legal avenue while putting no confidence Red Aid" established by the Communist sion and degradation he continues to tions, the AFL-CIO poured tens of in a judicial system which is part and par­ International in the early 1920s. As pio­ write from behind bars. When Governor millions into the Democratic Party's cof­ cel of the capitalist state apparatus. We neer American Trotskyist James P. Can­ Ridge signed a death warrant against fers while working overtime to prevent have publicized Jamal's cause, raised crit­ non, an early leader of the ILD, wrote Jamal in June 1995, it touched off an even the smallest strike. ically important funds for his legal battles - during the worldwide campaign of labor explosion of protest and pUblicity. Hun­ In fighting to mobilize th~ unions in and fought to mobilize the broadest range protest on behalf of anarchist workers dreds of thousands of students, workers continued on page 9

12 28 NOVEMBER 1997