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-. WfJIIIlEIiS """'111)_. lI!'o~~_ ,.... X-623 No. 657 ~..~-:;:", . ..'- 6 December 1996 New York Governor Follows Clinton's Lead Welfare-Bashers: Busting Unions, Starving the Poor
Reuters Yee/NY Times
A few days before Thanksgiv against the ghettos and barrios. ing, the New York City govern Seeking as always to foster ment heralded the holiday sea Richards/Magnum and deepen racial antagonisms son by dumping more than 6,000 Bipartisan war on the poor consigns millions to misery. Democratic president Clinton signing within the working class, the people off the welfare rolls, leav. federal anti-welfare bill (left), Republican New York governor Pataki (right). Above: Desperate bourgeoisie seeks to sucker ing them with no money, food mother begs for handouts in NYC subway. white workers and the middle stamps or medical coverage. class into believing that the Around the same time, the fed- assault on social welfare pro eral government sent out letters grams is directed at black people notifying 260,000 children suf- Jobs for All at Union Wages! and immigrants, who supposedly fering from cerebral palsy, sickle live off of working people's cell anemia and other serious hard-earned tax dollars. Aside disabilities that their benefits were about 19th-century England at least provided The devastation of welfare will further from the fact that the majority of welfare to be taken away. But as already paltry for some minimal subsistence. The anti decimate the overwhelmingly black and recipients are white, this grotesque racist benefits for poor and working people get poor laws being imposed across the U.S. Hispanic inner cities, whose inhabitants lie aims to cover over the reality that the the ax, the vultures on Wall Street are today are a recipe for starvation. What the capitalist rulers increasingly deem to attacks on welfare are pari and parcel of glowing with holiday cheer as stock Pataki's cruel and vindictive measure be a "surplus" popUlation now that the a broader assault on the living standards prices go through the roof. means is that there will be ever more big urban industrial plants they used to of all working people. Well over a cen While the pre-Thanksgiving welfare homeless mothers standing on wintry work in have been turned into rusting tury ago, Karl Marx described in Capital massacre in NYC was blamed on "admin street corners begging for handouts to hulks. While the median family income how the maintenance of a "reserve army" istrative error," it prefigured what's in feed their children. for blacks is barely half that of whites, of unemployed was an integral part of store for nearly one and a half mil When Clinton signed the federal anti the percentage of blacks living below the capitalism, serving to degrade working lion welfare recipients throughout the' welfare law last summer, the story was official poverty line is more than triple conditions and to lower wages for all state. Following the lead of Democratic that benefits were being handed back to what it is for whites. Meanwhile, 42 per workers. As Marx explained: president Clinton and the Republican the control of the states through "block cent of all black children are on wel "The over-work of the employed part of controlled Congress, New York Republi grants." In fact, the real message to the fare, compared with 16 percent of white the working-class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater can governor George Pataki last month states was to shred all social welfare pro children. pressure that the latter by its competition announced plans to slash welfare benefits grams. As an article on "Single Mothers The all-sided assault on the ghetto exerts on the former, forces these to across the board. This vicious proposal and Welfare" in Scientific American masses can be measured in the huge gap submit to over-work and to subjugation aims not only to starve the poor, but to (October 1996) noted, "an ensuing 'race in life expectancy between whites and under the dictates of capital. The con to the bottom' will occur, in order to dis blacks: a recent study shows [hat a demnation of one part of the working punish them as welL Families would have class to enforced idleness by the over their benefits reduced if their children courage potential recipients of welfare young black man in Harlem-where the work of the other part, and the converse, miss school, teen mothers would be from moving between states." Now Clin death rate is over four times that for becomes a means of enriching the indi forced to live with their parents, and all ton is cynically talking of "softening" the white men nationally-has only a 37 vidual capitalists." recipients would be subjected to finger devastating effects of his new law, mainly percent chance of making it to age 65. To This was written during the period of printing and demeaning drug tests. by restoring food stamps to "legal" immi enforce the growing disparity in income capitalist expansion. Today, under condi New York State's Home Relief pro grants-but millions of immigrants and between rich and poor and the immisera tions of capitalist decline, this process is gram, which provides cash grants to other poor people would still be left to tion of the inner cities, the racist rulers qualitatively exacerbated, resulting in the about 230,000 adults without children, starve. unleash ever more virulent police terror massive growth of a chronically unem would be abolished. Nearly all welfare ployed population. And in this deeply recipients, no matter how weak and dis racist country, minorities-particularly abled, no matter how many kids they black people-make up a vastly dispro have at home, would be forced into portionate share of this growing army of slave-labor "workfare" The Fight for a permanently unemployed. ~~ programs, as is already Revolutionary Party It is in the vital interest of the inte r-. happening in New York grated labor movement to launch a class City and other areas. struggle fight in defense of the poor, o Payments to families blacks and immigrants. Yet the existing ~ o would be progressively Cannon Writings pro-capitalist leadership of the trade ..- ()() cut for each year on unions doesn't even act to defend the welfare, declining by ihterests of its own members against ~ Published in Spanish l" layoffs and wage cuts, .much less N 45 percent after fouf IrI years and going down mobilize on behalf of the ghetto and bar N to zero after five. The rio poor. To smash the assault on social r-. "poor laws" enacted in continued on page 11 NATION EJlnything YouAt~'YS l#mted To Know About Seen but Were Afraid To Ask Villag~ Voice Spits on Who's Who on the Far Left?
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No. 657 6 December 1996 SPONSOR: PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE
2 WORKERS VANGUARD Letters
have more clearly seen that "the main enemy is at home," and the Freikorps Why Internationalists Call for and Nazis would not have had this as a cause to rally around. Troop occupations by the imperialist victors followed World War II, with U.S. U.S. Bases Out of Japan troops occupying'Japan. During the post war strike wave, the U.S. occupying army The following letter hy our comrades of Japan, the Japanese proletariat could By way of historical analogy, we found was instrumental in propping up a weak of the Spartacist GrouplJapan is in reply more clearly see their main enemy, the it useful to review documents written dur capitalist Japanese government, and was to a Japanese leftist named Fujimoto, Japanese capitalists, with their own im ing the time of the Communist Interna key in crushing many post-war strikes. Following the Chinese Revolution of < who criticized in an Internet posting, posing military machine. tional of Lenin and Trotsky. The Fourth quoted helow, our call for" u.s. military A genuine internationalist position is Congress of the Communist International 1949, the U.S. saw it in its interest to have out of Japan!" (see "ICL Protests Bomh developed from actual, concrete circum took up the question of French imperial a prosperous and stable Japan as an anti ing of Iraq;' WV No. 651,13 Septemher). stances. Today, in global terms, Japan is a ist troops occupying sections of Germany Communist bulwark in Asia. Thus, while second-rate military power while the after World War I: "The Communist Par the occupation ended in 1953, U.S. troops Tokyo, Japan huge American military machine is a ties, above all those of Germany and stayed as a forward base to fight against 29 November 1996 dagger pointed at the deformed workers France, must start ajoint struggle against Communism. The U.S. bases in Japan Dear Fujimoto, states in Asia. Hence, U.S. troops in the Versailles peace treaty .... The Czech were strategic to U.S. imperialism's kill Our comrades at Workers Vanguard Japan are the forward detachments for osiovak arid Polish Communist parties, as ing and maiming millions of Chinese, forwarded to us an undated E-mail letter provocations against the Chinese, North well as the Communist Parties of other Koreans and Vietnamese in the wars in you sent to them in late September. In Korea and Vietnam. this letter, and in the course of our J1. During the Cold War, the Japanese numerous discussions, you have raised ·~·':~t1~ bourgeoisie was nearly united in support your disagreement with our slogan "U.S. of American military troops being sta military out of Japan!" which appears in <\ tioned in Japan. But the whole shape of our September 9 leaflet, "Japanese Impe global politics has undergone a funda rialism Endorses the Killing of Arabs mental sea change with the final undoing and Kurds-U.S. and All Imperialist of the October Revolution. Today. a sig Forces Out of the Persian Gulf!" nificant wing of the Japanese bourgeoisie Our leaflet was issued as part of an is openly and vocally "anti-American." International Communist Leag'ue cam The vicious, inhuman gang-rape of a 12- paign of protest which stretched from year-old Okinawan girl by U.S. soldiers New York to Berlin and from Tokyo to has served as a rallying cry for national Milan in the spirit of true Leninist inter ism and cheap anti-Americanism, span nationalism. Workers Vanguard, newspa ning from the rightists and fascists per of the Spartacist League/U.S., head through sections of the bourgeoisie to the lined, "U.S. Imperialist Butchers Hands JCP and New Leftists. What we have Off Iraq!" and called for the defeat of here is an intensification of tensions U.S. imperialism. Far from simply con between competing imperialist powers demning the U.S., our leaflet was directed over spheres of influence and economic against our "own" ruling class, which was markets, and the left is lining up behind complicit in the bloody bombing of Iraq. its own ruling class. As we wrote, "Under the fig leaf of UN In our leaflet of September 9 we write: Resolution 688, the Hashimoto popular Spartacist Japan "What is needed are strikes by the Japa front government is one of the few impe Spartacist Group/Japan at January 1991 protest against Persian Gulf War nese proletariat working on the [U.S.] rialist governments to come out in sup called for defense of Iraq and for labor to oppose Japanese bourgeoisie's aid bases similar to those that occurred in port of this attack against Iraqis and to U.S.-led imperialist war. Okinawa during the Vietnam War in Kurds." 1971 which prevented U.S. ships and You write, "The SGJ raises a slogan Korean and Vietnamese deformed work vassal countries subordinate to France, planes from leaving the base for 24 'U.S. military out of Japan!' It is wrong. ers states. To fail to oppose this imperi have a duty to combine the fight against hours." As you can see, we call for c1ass It is anti.-U.S. nationalist JCP's and vari alist military presence would be to their own bourgeoisies with the fight struggle means of evicting U.S. troops; ous new lefts' slogan, nationalist and pac acquiesce to the continued military en against French imperialism." unlike the JCP, we don't preach illusions ifist. Communists must call to 'Organize circlement of three of the four remaining In a 13 September 1922 letter to the in a peaceful, democratic capitalist Japan SDF and U.S. soldiers!'" This touches on deformed workers states, and would sug French CP, Trotsky, in the name of the brokering a deal with U.S. imperialism an important question for communist gest an attitude of disinterest toward the Executive Committee of the Com intern, to get them out. We firmly reject the internationalists. Indeed, any group in aspirations of the masses of Indonesia, writes of the French troops: "The con JCP's nationalist position that Japan is a Japan whose primary slogan is "U.S. the Philippines, South Korea, etc. who stant threats to occupy German territory neocolonial victim of U.S. imperialism. Troops Out," such as the Japanese Com seek an end to military dictatorial rule constitute one of the biggest obstaeles in Thus, we go on to write in our leaflet, munist Party, is indeed social-chauvinist, backed by U.S. support, training, weap the way of the growth of the proletarian "The main enemy is at home, our own alibiing their own bourgeoisie. Our oppo onry and the threat of possible direct revolution in Germany." Indeed, when rapacious bourgeoisie and military. Japan sition to U.S. troops is a subordinate and U.S. intervention. In September, U.S. French troops occupied the German Ruhr is not a colony of the U.S. but the second tactical question in the framework of our F-16 fighter bombers and aircraft carriers valley in January 1923, this became a largest. imperialist power in the world opposition to all imperialism, in which stationed from Misawa to Yokosuka were rallying cry for all German nationalists. with its own appetites-to once again the first premise is "the main enemy is deployed and used in the murderous If French troops had not been occupying enslave and exploit the workers and toil at home." If U.S. troops were forced' out bombing of Iraq. parts of Germany, German workers could ers of Asia." •
League) militarily supported. The forma tion of an international brigade acting to Afghanistan and the Fight for defend the Soviet Union and unveiled women in Afghanistan could have also had explosive consequences in the USSR Political Revolution in the USSR itself, especially among soldiers and offi cers who had believed in the internation New York, NY ated workers state undertook a progres after some six decades of Stalinist repres alist implications of their involvement in 22 October 1996 sive act. Although undertaken purely for sion, lies and sellouts-of a contradic Afghanistan. This calculation was among defensive geopolitical reasons, it did, as tion between the collectivized founda the things that led the ICL to say, retro Dear Editor, the article emphasized, go across the tions of the Soviet state and the parasitic spectively: better to have fought imperial The article "Afghanistan: Hell for grain of the Stalinists' abject pursuit of bureaucracy. When Gorbachev & Co. ism in Afghanistan than have to fight (or Women" (WV No. 654, 25 October) is "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism. abandoned Afghanistan with the futile not fight) counterrevolution inside the very powerful on the woman question In the 1930s and heading into World aim of trying to appease imperialism, Soviet Union. In other words, the brigade and also good on exposing the role of War II, Trotsky analyzed tne character of making a point of renouncing the sup proposal was made in good part to further anti-Soviet "leftists" who opposed the the Soviet degenerated workers state and posed 'Trotskyite heresy" of "export of the struggle for political revolution in the USSR's military intervention in Afghani put forward the program of political rev revolution," this was the direct precursor Soviet Union. stan beginning in 1979-80. olution, noting that if the working class to the Soviet bureaucracy abandoning In the absence of such an internation Within that context, I think the article did not throw out the bureaucracy, the "socialism" in East Germany and even in alist struggle, among the reported con somewhat underplays the direct relation bureaucracy would strangle the workers its own country. sequences of the Soviet pullout from ship between the Soviet withdrawal from state. Though it took longer than Trotsky The Partisan Defense Committee's Afghanistan was a growth of ultranation Afghanistan in 1989 and the final col anticipated, the final dissolution of Sta 1989 offer to the Afghan government to alist sentiment and sympathies for fascist lapse of Stalinism itself. The Soviet linist rule under the military and espe organize international brigades to help outfits like Pamyat among embittered intervention in support of the moderniz cially economic pressure of imperialist fight the CIA-backed mujahedin cut veterans of the Afghanistan war, after ing nationalist PDPA regime and of the encirclement of the Soviet Union con throats in the city of Jalalabad was aimed that effort had been repudiated by the civil war against CIA-instigated CQunter formed very precisely to his analysis. not only at bringing concrete assistance t6 Soviet government. revolutionary terror was the last time the The Afghanistan intervention testified the side which the international Spartacis.t Comradely, bureaucracy ruling the Soviet degener- to the persistence-attenuated as it was tendency (now International Communist LG 6 DECEMBER 1996 3 -i Late on the night of October 27, two ::r -'" 0 E'" Ku Klux Klansmen stopped their pickup 3 U truck outside Club Illusions in rural en '" '"en Cl'" Pelion, South Carolina, pulled out a semi m cS :J CD automatic rifle and began methodically co :.:: iil :J firing into the crowd of black people 0. gathered outside. Three teenagers were wounded by the terrorist nightriders and a dozen other young people were left in a state of shock. The would-be killers' "Redneck Shop," truck was emblazoned with a Confeder nest of Klan ate flag, and the KKKers had come from nightriders. Right: a "Rebel Flag" rally earlier that day. 10-year-old Dwight Barely three weeks after this poten Miller, victim of near tially deadly racist attack, on November lynching in South Carolina. 20 the city council in Laurens, South Carolina, an hour's drive from Pelion, voted to grant a business license to the town's notorious KKK "Redneck Shop." Billing itself as the "World's Only Klan Museum," it sells Confederate flags and other racist paraphernalia and features a marched to protest the opening of this Dwight Miller. When Dwight went to cians is their perception that the promi grotesque "display" of open coffins con Klan terror nest earlier this year. On their house to play with their 9-year-old nent display of the Confederate flag has taining black mannequins with ropes March 24, white 43-year-old carpet layer son, he was subjected to a near-lynching. become "bad for business." With the in around their necks! Hundreds of people David Hunter courageously smashed his The Mims and other family members flux of industry in recent years to this pickup truck into the KKK "shop" (see took Dwight into the woods, tied him to a low-wage, open-shop region,North and "Anti-Klan Fighter Rams Storefront," tree, hit him with a crowbar, choked him South Carolina together today have more WV No. 643, 12 April). with a belt and fired two shotgun blasts factory workers than any state except Cal Underscoring that the Laurens "store" past his head. ifornia. The multiracial working class has is a launching pad for race-terror provo These terrorist attacks and beatings the social power and material· interest to cations, Hunter told Workers Vanguard in are encouraged by the climate of racist smash escalating racist terror and ensure a recent phone interview that news foot reaction fostered by both the Democratic that the Confederate flag of slavery is age of the Pelion attack clearly showed a and Republican parties in Washington tom down and stays down wherever it videotape from the "Redneck Shop" in and, in the most direct sense, by the appears. What is lacking is the resolute the cab of the pickUp truck. For his anti State House in Columbia, South Caro class-struggle leadership to wield labor's racist action last March, David Hunter lina. The Confederate battle flag has power to defend working people and all still faces two felony counts of malicious flown over the South Carolina State the oppressed. Indeed, any serious effort damage to property and up to 20 years in House since 1962, when it was put up in to unionize unorganized workers in the prison. We demand: Drop the charges racist defiance of the civil rights move South will require a head-on confronta against David Hunter! ment. Finally, after years of protests tion with the KKK, which has historically What happened in Pelion is only the against this obscene symbol of Jim Crow been in the forefront of union-busting in most recent of a series of racist attacks in segregation and Klan terror and growing the region. South Carolina, including a rash of arson complaints by local business leaders, We fight for the construction of a assaults on black churches. On Novem Republican governor David Beasley, multiracial revolutionary workers party ber 22, white racists Benjamin Mims echoed by die-hard racist Strom Thur dedicated to putting the racist capitalist and his wife Betty were convicted by mond, have proposed removing the flag rulers and their fascist dogs of war out of WV Photo SL supporter Richard Bradley tears an integrated jury in Manning, South from the Capitol building, only to plant business for good, from the White House down Confederate flag of slavery in Carolina of aggravated assault and bat it a few yards away at a Confederate to the backwoods of South Carolina, Fin front of San Francisco's Civic Center, tery for their grisly beating and torture "memorial" on the State House grounds. ish the Civil War! For black liberation 1984. Finish the Civil War! last January of a 10-year-old black child, What's motivating these racist politi- through socialist revolution! •
Indonesia: Free Imprisoned Leftists and Unionists! As we have reported earlier, in the supporters of the leftist People's Demo of two tame opposition parties 'permitted of pro-independence actiVIsts in East wake of massive anti-government pro cratic Party (PRD) for particularly severe by the military dictatorship. But Muchtar Timor's capital city of Dili on November tests by supporters of bourgeois opposi repression (see "Indonesia Powder Keg," Pakpahan, leader of the banned indepen 25. The struggle of the East Timorese tion leader Megawati Sukarnoputri last WV No. 654, 24 October). On November dent SBSI trade union, and at least nine against Jakarta's genocidal annexation summer, the Suharto military dictator 27, the regime announced the release of PRb militants, including 27-year-old and forced "Indonesianization" of their ship in Indonesia arrested over 200 peo 124 supporters of Megawati, head ofthe leader Budiman Sudjatmiko and activists island country is integrally linked with ple, targeting trade-union activists and Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), one Petrus Haryanto and Garda Sembiring, that of the workers and oppressed within continue to languish in the dictatorship's Indonesia fighting against the yoke of the dungeons on charges of "subversion" imperialist-backed dictatorship. Indone which carries the death sentence. Free sian troops out now-Independence for Pakpahan and the PRD supporters now! East Timor! Free all pro-independence Not content with holding Pakpahan in prisoners! detention since July, the Indonesian Suharto's release of Megawati's sup Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League Supreme Court has now vindictively re porters while leftists and unionists re versed its earlier acquittal of J>akpahan main imprisoned and under threat of tor on frame-up charges of "inciting rioting" ture and death underlines the suicidal o $10/22 issues of Workers Vanguard 0 New 0 Renewal· during convulsive workers' protests which character of the popular-frontist policy (includes English·language Spartacist, Wemen and Revolution and Black History and the Class Struggle) shook the city of Medan in 1994. In pursued by the PRD, which promotes the international rates: $25/22 issues-Airmail $10/22 issues-Seamail overturning Pakpahan's November 1994 PDI as the democratic alternative to the conviction last year, the Supreme Court current regime. It is not tame bourgeois o $2/6 int~oductory issues of Workers Vanguard (includes English-language Spartacist) admitted that the charges were com critics like Megawati which the rulers of o $2/4 issues of Espartaco (en espanol) (includes Spanish-language Spartacist) pletely baseless, noting that "Pakpahan Indonesia's "New Order" fear, but the was on the island of Java and not in spectre of socialist revolution by the Name ______~------Medan at the time." industrial proletariat standing at the head Address ______And even as it released Megawati's of the dispossessed peasantry, women, supporters in Jakarta, the military regime national minorities and all the oppressed. ______Apt. # Phone (_) ______announced the arrests of an unnamed As an elementary act of class solidarity. number of East Timorese, who face up to the international workers movement must City State Zip ______657 20 years' imprisonment for "insulting the mobilize to demand: Free all victims of Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 head of state" (UPI, 29 November). The Suharto's right-wing .repression, from arrests followed a protest by hundreds Jakarta to Dili, now! •
4 WORKERS VANGUARD SI'ikll'$"';.... ~:~-~ French Truckers Face Down Government, Bosses
Continuing a wave of combative wave was the union bureaucracy's workers' struggles that has rocked chauvinist capitulation to the bour France for the past year, truck geoisie's racist assault on "immi drivers staged a 12-day strike in grants" (i.e., virtually anyone of November which brought the African or North African descent). country's road traffic to a virtual Though not the case in trucking, standstill. A number of auto assem- . immigrant workers constitute an bly plants and other factories were important component of the prole forced to shut down for lack of tariat in the private sector, par parts or fuel. Would-be strike ticularly in the strategic auto in breakers were given short shrift by dustry. But the union misleaders the militant truckers: one owner supported the government's racist operator who tried to ram through "Vigipirate" campaign, in which a strike picket north of Lyon ended the army is used to terrorize immi up in an intensive care ward. The grant neighborhoods. The bureau strike was broadly popular among crats' support to the bourgeoisie's the working masses: in cities, racist campaign also helped give towns and villages across France, a mantle of "respectability" to well-wishers flocked to the truck the fascist National Front, which ers' barricades to offer food and has been making electoral gains support. and now controls several major The impact of the strike was felt municipalities. throughout West Europe, as drivers The French government's con used their rigs to blockade major cessions to striking truckers and highways and border crossings into repeated hesitations should not Spain, Germany and Belgium, as Truckers strike blockade shuts down traffic on Normandy highway. mask the fact that the French bour well as around ferry ports on the geoisie is determined to inflict a English Channel. Truck roadblocks also ices. Indeed, the truckers' walkout was strike. Itself facing Socialist Party (PS) more decisive blow against the unions. surrounded virtually all oil refineries and punctuated by a series of shorter strikes president Fran~ois Mitterrand's racist This would set the stage for a broader on fuel depots, causing most of the coun which interrupted Air France's domestic austerity attacks at the time, the French slaught against the working class. More try's gas stations to run dry and flights, cut rail service in Rouen and proletariat embraced the British miners' over, continuing economic militancy in forcing the government to requisition Nantes, and crippled public transporta , battle, as the CGT organized an exten itself, in the absence of a revolutionary "emergency" supplies and impose fuel tion in Nice. In Rouen, bus drivers who sive campaign of fund-raising and food resolution to the crisis of French capital rationing. Seeking to keep pace with the are also demanding retirement at age 55 shipments for the British miners, and ism, can act to push the middle classes workers' combative spirit, a normally rema.in out on strike. French miners dumped truckloads of toward the far right. The fact tliat the ref subservient trade-union bureaucrat de Yet the pro-capitalist trade-union coal destined for Britain. But the British ormist bureaucracy ties the hands of the clared: "There is a moment when the law bureaucrats worked overtime to head Trades Union Congress tops refused to workers and prevents bold action against stands aside against social reality." off any extension of the truckers strike bring out the other bastions of British the capitalist system creates an opening Fearful of igniting a social explosion to other sectors. The Communist Party labor in solidarity, in a class battle to win for Le Pen's fascist marauders, who ter like last December's mass strike wave (PCF)-Ied CGT trade-union federation the miners strike and topple Margaret rorize immigrants and bid to act as the by rail and other public-sector workers, organized a day of protest demonstra Thatcher's right-wing government. bourgeoisie's final resort against a revolu the conservative government of President tions toward the end of the walkout When French truckers staged a previ tionary challenge by the proletariat. . Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain but deliberately avoided mobilizing real ous strike four years ago, then-president It is vital that French workers break Juppe rapidly intervened in an attempt to solidarity strike action. And the social Mitterrand unleashed the police to out of the stranglehold of the reformist "mediate" between the truckers and their democratic CFDT and Fa tops openly launch violent attacks on strikers and misleaders; otherwise, the bureaucracy, employers. By the time strike blockades opposed extending the strike. Moreover, tanks were deployed to clear trucks acting in collusion with the bourgeoisie, started coming down on November 29, barely 10 percent of drivers are in any off the road. This time, Juppe refrained will either dissipate the workers' mili the drivers had succeeded in forcing the union-and even this is a significantly from overt strikebreaking, fearing that a tancy or betray their strikes and set them government and the trucking bosses to higher proportion than in the rest of the similar show of force would provoke an up for defeat. The key question is drop the retirement age from 60 to 55- private sector. Though, for a change, the extension of the strike. To pay for the the struggle to build an internationalist one of the lowest in the private ·sector various union federations joined in nom settlement, Juppe is now planning to dip Leninist-Trotskyist party to lead the throughout West Europe. Other conces inally supporting the strike, the backstab into state pension funds and to offer the workers to power. As our comrades of sions secured by the strikers included a bing of the union tops underscores the trucking bosses a tax cut on their profits. the Ligue Trotskyste de France noted in slightly higher wage settlement, payment need for a single industrial union encom-. Yet a section of the French bourgeoisie a leaflet-titled "For a New, Revolution for previously unpaid time spent waiting passing all drivers. . was furious with Juppe for not making ary Leadership!"-distributed widely to for trucks to be loaded and unloaded and Across the Channel, the British media concessions sooner. Right-wing com strikers last December (see WV No. 635, an increase in the number of paid sick and the Conservative government of mentator Jean d'Ormesson declared in 15 December 1995): days. To settle the strike, Juppe proposed Prime Minister John Major tried to the conservative daily Le Figaro: "Re "The bourgeoisie is on the attack against paying for the agreement out of the state provoke a chauvinist furor against the forms must be undertaken if we want to the working class. The reformists and class collaborators of the PCF and PS budget. French truckers, railing about British escape rampant, permanent revolution," and their centrist tails offer only illusory However, no sooner had the road drivers being "held hostage" by the adding, "the first reform is to avoid wait reforms. They are all incapable of lead blocks been lifted than pink slips began blockades. In fact, a significant number ing for rebellion and strikes ... to meet ing the working class in the current to rain down upon strike activists, as the of British, Spanish and other truckers legitimate demands." struggles and in the struggle to end the employers seek to exact vengeance for enthusiastically manned pickets along Conditions are ripe for an all-out system of wage slavery once and for all. Only a party of the Bolshevik type based the militant shutdown. It is the respon side their French comrades. Meanwhile, mobilization of the working class against on a working-class revolutionary per sibility of the entire workers movement to a four-day truckers strike in Denmark dis Chirac/Juppe's attacks on the working spective can lead the workers forward. mobilize in defense of the fired truckers rupted transportation throughout northern class and minorities of African and The forging in struggle of that party is and to oppose all' victimizations and Europe and cut off most truck transport to Maghrebian (North African) descent. the urgent task of the hour." _ reprisals. Scandinavia. However, the British Trans Polls showed that three-quarters of the Nonetheless, the settlement is a signif port and General Workers Union did little population supported the truckers strike. icant blow to Chirac's policy of trying to to encourage or organize class solidarity Yet the union bureaucrats excused their force austerity down the workers' throats with the French truckers, moaning only refusal to extend the strike to public in order to satisfy the dictates of the Ger (in a November 28 statement) about "the transportation by claiming this· would Moving? man bankers and the Maastricht Treaty, limited progress made in negotiations." undermine the strike's "popularity." Sim To receive Workers Vanguard which aims at establishing a single Euro Meanwhile the CGT, known for its call ilarly, during last winter's public service without interruption please let us pean currency by 1999. Coming barely to "Produce French," has always sought strikes, the union tops refused to reach know at least three weeks before one year after the mass strikes and street to blame foreign workers for the crisis of out to the private sector with the argu yOU. move. Send your new and protests by public service workers, the French capitalism. ment that those workers were too "con old address to: latest strike will no doubt inspire further Workers on both sides of the Channel servative." The latest strike dramatically Spartacist Publishing Co. struggles against the government's cam would do well to recall the powerful puts the lie to that. P.O. Box 1377 GPO paign to slash workers' living standards manifestations of international class soli As we noted at the time, a key obstacle . New York, NY 10116 and gut health care and other social serv- ~ darity during the 1984-85 British miners to the extension of last December's strike 6 DECEMBER 1996 5 Cannon Writings Published in Spanish
The International Communist League nist Party leader Antonio Mella was is pleased to announce the first-ever pub assassinated in early 1929, probably by a lication in Spanish of a selection of key hitman from Stalin's GPU; Peruvian writings by American Trotskyist leader TneEightt for ~ Communist Jose Carlos Mariategui died James P. Cannon. Centered on factional in 1930 at the age of 34; AgustIn Fara documents of Cannon's fight to build a bundo MartI, Alfonso Luna, Mario Zapata revolutionary proletarian party, the com Revolutjol)a.tyParty and other Salvadoran Communist leaders pilation in the new Spanish-language were murdered in the massacre with Spartacist (No. 27, December 1996) which the bourgeoisie crushed the 1932 includes a number of other selections, uprising. , notably Cannon's 1959 article, "The Although far smaller than the Stalinist Russian Revolution and the American CP, the Trotskyists of the Communist Negro Movement." The new Spartacist League of America (later the Socialist also reprints a memorial speech by Spar 'SPARTACJST/~ • Workers Party rSWPj) possessed a cohe tacist League/U.S. Central Committee sive and experienced leadership core, cru member James Robertson on the occasion DICIEMBRE DE 1996 EDICION EN ESPANOL cial continuity with the struggles of the of Cannon's demh in 1974. The selection early Communist movement, and signifi was prepared with the help of the Prome cant links to the organized proletariat. As theus Research Library, research and elucidated in Cannon's letter "Mass Work archival facility of the SUU.S. Central and Factional Struggle," the SWP sought Committee. These writings are also to be to embody the Leninist understanding of published in forthcoming issues of the democratic-centralist principles of organ French- and German-language editions ization: the fullest democratic internal of Spartacist. Printed below are excerpts political debate, conscious attention to in English from the introduction to the the selection of a leadership representing Spanish-language Spartacist, "The Fight in its majority the political views of the for a Revolutionary Party." majority of the party membership, and the need for all party members in their s an early adherent of the Com external work to carry out the line and munist International of Lenin and perspectives decided upon. Trotsky, James P. Cannon strug A Cannon and other leaders worked gled for the greater part of his life to closely with Trotsky particularly during apply the lessons of the 1917 Russian Trotsky'S exile in Mexico. Under Trot Revolution to building a revolutionary sky's tutelage, Cannon learned to put the workers party in the U.S. Today, with the struggle for political program and politi world's ruling classes braying over the cal clarity first in factional struggle, "death of communism," most of those avoiding the bureaucratic practices and who consider themselves radical no clique infighting that had marred the longer claim allegiance to Leninism, even internal life of the early Communist Party the perverted parody preached by the Sta in the U.S. This fruitful political collabo linists. Thus there is a great disjuncture ration between Cannon and Trotsky was between the present level of conscious brought to bear in the 1939-40 fight in the ness of the proletariat, youth and self Trotskyist party in the U.S. against a proclaimed leftists around the world and petty-bourgeois opposition led by James the writings of Cannon, who was the most Burnham and Max Shachtman. able practitioner of Leninism yet pro Reflecting the pressures of imperial duced in the United States. Yet for those ism, on the eve of the U.S. entry into of us who fight for new October Revolu FranCia Mexico 'FF World War II, this opposition repudiated tions-and for a new generation of young $5 the Trotskyist position of unconditional radicals and working-class militants who are seeking the road to human emancipa military defense of the Soviet Union. New Spanish-language Spartacist. Order now: $1.00 for Single issue; $2.00 for Trotsky'S seminal writings from this fac tion-Cannon's writings and speeches subscription to Espartaco, publication of the Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico, illuminate with crystalline clarity the tional struggle, his last, were published including Spartacist. Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist Publishing Co., as In Defense of Marxism. Cannon's doc struggle not only for a vanguard party to Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116. uments were also later published in book bring revolutionary consciousness to the world's working class but also to main form as The Struggle for a Proletarian tain the revolutionary program and pur section against those who, under the the centrist opportunism of Norden and Party. pose of the vanguard against the pres impact of the final undoing of the Octo Negrete [see "A Shamefaced Defection The Fight Against sures of bourgeois ideology and violence. ber Revolution, began to look to alien from Trotskyism," WV No. 648, 5 July]. Pabloist Revisionism The small forces of our revolutionary political programs and to vehicles other One of the lasting contributions of this international have certainly not been im than a Leninist vanguard party to advance fight is the publication in Spanish of these Outside the United States, the Trotsky mune to the pressures of imperialist tri the cause of the liberation of humankind. particular works of Cannon, which are ist organizations tended to be far weaker umphalism, and corresponding regression In this fight, and more generally, we addressed to the struggle against an politically and organizationally. The of proletarian class consciousness, com have been hampered by the unavailability earlier manifestation of the liquidation of problems were perhaps most persistently ing in the wake of the counterrevolution of Cannon's experiences and contribu the need for a vanguard party. exemplified by the French section in the ary destruction of the former Soviet tions on the party question in languages 1930s: largely petty-bourgeois in its The Fight for the Leninist Union. The struggle to orient our party in other than English. In our Mexican sec composition, beset by cliques and persis Program and Party this period of post-Soviet reaction was tion, the translation of Cannon's writings tent dead-end factionalism, perennially brought out most recently in a sharp fight on party struggle served directly to arm As a delegate to the Sixth Congress of prone to sectarianism, with a penchant in our International and in our Mexican the comrades in their recent fight against the Comintern in 1928, Cannon was won for dilettantish "leaders" seen as individ to Trotskyism after getting his hands on ual "stars" and a disdain for the full-time Trotsky's critique of the Comintern's party workers. Both Trotsky himself and draft program-later published as The later Cannon struggled in vain to get the Third International After Lenin, a searing French comrades to grasp the need for a indictment of the treacherous policies of collective leadership, in which the indi Stalinism both in the Soviet Union and vidual weaknesses of comrades have the internationally. possibility to be overcome by the party's Cannon brought some 100 supporters combined strengths. of the Cannon-Dunne faction of the The Trotskyist organizations, espe Communist Party (CP) to the Trotskyist cially in Europe, suffered massive physi movement when he was expelled in cal losses during the war. Trotsky's mur 1928. This accretion of a formed fac der by a Stalinist agent in Mexico was tional grouping from the Communist compounded by the death of the most Party accounts, in part, for the unique his promising Trotskyist leaders. Weakened tory of Trotskyism in the U.S. In China, and disoriented, their human continuity the Trotskyists won even more substantial to Trotsky's party hanging by a thread, forces from the Communist Party, but this the European sections were ill-equipped potentially powerful Trotskyist organiza to handle the new pressures of the post tion was destroyed early on by the com war world. The victory of the Soviet bined repressive forces of the bourgeois Army over Hitler's Nazi Third Reich, nationalist Guomindang, the British and together with the creation of deformed Japanese imperialists and the Stalinists. workers states in East Europe, increased Diego Rivera In Latin America, political differentiation the power and prestige of the Stalin Mural by Mexican artist Diego R~vera depicts Trotsky, Cannon, Engels and among dissident Communist leaders was ists. The response to this unanticipated Marx behind banner of Fourth International. cut short by early death: Cuban Commu- strengthening of Stalini~m was one of 6 WORKERS VANGUARD impressionism, incarnated in the person the barren and hostile climate of the '50s of Michel Pablo, a young Greek Trotsky in the U.S., the now-aging cadres of the ist leader who emerged as the principal SWP were looking for something else to spokesman for the Fourth International. embrace as the vehicle for "revolution." Pablo put forward a theory of a "new The party abstained from intervening in world reality" with liquidationist conclu the growing struggle for black rights in sions. Positing that under Cold War pres the American South, the civil rights sure the Stalinist parties would be forced movement, adopting an uncritical attitude into "roughly outlining a revolutionary toward its liberal pro-capitalist leadership orientation" ("Where Are We Going," and later black nationalist sequels. All the 1951), Pablo insisted that the Trotskyists opportunist pressures came together in had to enter the CPs in order to pressure early 1960, when the SWP went whole the Stalinists to the left (in some coun hog for Castro, whom they heralded as an tries, notably Germany and Britain, the "unconscious Trotskyist." From here the entry tactic was applied to the social SWP went into rapid flight to outright democracy). This theory effectively reformism, centrally expressed in its deprived the Fourth International of any role as the "best builders" of the pro political reason for existence, transform Democratic Party right wing of the Viet ing itself into cheerleaders for "left" Sta- m.m antiwar movement in the U.S. The revolutionary program of the SWP, which was the program of Lenin . and Trotsky, was stronger than the party it created. The founding cadres of our International Communist League started as the SWP's Revolutionary Tendency, Proletarian internationalism: Spartacist League organized protest formed to oppose the SWP's uncritical Russian president Boris Yeltsin visited Wall Street, 1992. adulation of the Cuban Castroites and its. embrace of petty-bourgeois black nation fact that Cannon's works are unavailable certain stage. definite triumph can be alism. Standing proudly on the revo in Latin America is itself a reflection of assumed .... lutionary foundations laid by Cannon the anti-Yankee nationalism that passes "The sooner the American proletarian l'(Jl1guard in North. Central and South and in continuity with his fight to con for revolutionary politics in these coun America understands the necessity for a struct the proletarian vanguard beginning tries. That Cannon is also unavailable closer revolutionary collaboration in the in the early Communist movement and throughout most of Europe is testimony struggle against the common enemy. the the Communist International, we claim to the legacy of Pabloist revisionism. more tangible and fruitful that alliance this heritage as our own. Having themselves liquidated the neces will be. To clarify, illustrate and organize sity for a Leninist party, they sneer at that struggle-herein lies one of the For Proletarian Cannon's struggle for Leninism as vul most important tasks of the Fourth - International." Internationalism! gar American "pragmatism." The writings of James P. Cannon may - Trotsky, "Ignorance is Not a As a communist leader in the U.S., Revolutionary Instrument" be circumscribed by his own experiences Cannon did not have to confront the ques (30 January 1939) as a leader of communist trade unionists tions of national liberation, the emanci Comrade Jim Robertson, a leader of pation of civil society from the church, and as a Leninist party leader in the U.S. But at each step he fought to orient him the Revolutionary Tendency in the SWP and the destruction of feudal peonage in self and his followers to find the interna and a founder of the Spartacist League/ the countryside which continue to plague tionalist revolutionary road for the U.S., noted Cannon's chief weakness in the countries of Latin America. The reso world's working class. On this road, his 1974 memorial speech: Cannon's lution of these questions lies through the James P. Cannon speaking at 1940 proletarian class struggle in North Amer failure to take on the responsibility of application of Trotsky's theory of perm a convention of Socialist Workers international leadership. But it is for nent revolution. Generalizing from the ica and the liberation of Latin America Party. from imperialist domination are inextri Cannon's strengths that the Spartacist experience of the Russian Revolution, cably linked. Trotsky argued this quite tendency claims his heritage. As Workers and in light of the experience of the linistsand other reformist and "Third powerfully: Vanguard, newspaper of the Spartacist Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, Trotsky World" nationalist forces. "It can be clearly deduced from what has understood that the bourgeoisies in back League/U.S., noted in its obituary for The majority of the materials on the been said that we far from recommend to Cannon (WV No. 52, 13 September party question which we are reprinting ward countries were too weak, corrupt the Latin American people that they pas sively await the revolution in the United 1974): here are drawn from Cannon's speeches and dependent on imperialism to play other than a reactionary role. Conse States or that the North American work "James P. Cannon was the finest commu to the SWP and letters to comrades from ers fold their arms until the Latin Ameri quently, the bourgeois-democratic tasks nist political leader this country has yet 1953, during the factional battle with the can peoples' moment of victory arrives. produced. In his prime he had the evi SWP's Cochran-Clarke minority which historically associated with bourgeois He who waits passively gets nothing. It dent capacity to lead the proletarian revo allied itself with Pablo. Cannon's views revolutions in Western Europe and the is necessary to continue the struggle lution in America to victory." U.S. can only be realized through the pro without interruption, to extend and as expressed in this fight are the culmi Cannon is important not only in his letarian conquest of power. deepen it, in harmony with the actually nation of his decades of experience as a existing historical conditions. But at the own right but as a classic exemplar, at While communists in the U.S. must Leninist politician. same time, one must comprehend the the highest level, of a working Leninist struggle against all the pressures and de reciprocal relation between the two prin At the same time, the SWP's fight fighting to build and maintain a proletar against Pablo's revisionism and liquida formations of being up against one of the cipal currents of the contemporary strug gle against imperialism. By merging at a ian revolutionary vanguard party.• tionism was belated and, largely speak most powerful imperialist bourgeoisies ing, nationally limited to the U.S. Though on the face of the planet, in Latin Amer the SWP did ally with ostensible anti ica the fight to forge authentic Bolshevik Pabloist Trotskyist parties in Britain and parties requires a relentless political fight France in an "International Committee," against nationalism and against a nation International Communist League the IC was never more than a paper alist "left" which embraces the social val (Fourth Internationalist) ues of its own rulers. The now-departed organization; in practice many of its sec Correspondence for: Address to: tions (e.g., Moreno in Argentina and Lora. Nahuel Moreno, an Argentine pseudo Trotskyist political bandit, was an arche Spartacist League of Australia Spartacist League, GPO Box 3473 in Bolivia) proved just as opportunist as Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia typical example. This would-be lider the Pabloists. The pressures of the Cold Spartacist League/Britain ...... Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041 War and the McCarthyite witchhunt in the maximo hailed every blood-drenched London NW5 3EU, England 1950s which set the context for the fear, "Third World" strongman from General Trotskyist League of Canada/ Ligue trotskyste du Canada ...... Trotskyist League, Box 7198, Station A pessimism and Iiquidationist conclusions Juan Domingo Peron to the Iranian feu Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1X8, Canada dalist ayatollah Khomeini. Such specious of the Cochran side of the Cochran Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands ...... SpAD, Postfach 5 55 Clarke minority also took their toll on the "anti-imperialism" has long been the 10127 Berlin, Germany rationale for supporting popular-jront SWP's cadre as a whole. Coming out of Dublin Spartacist Group ...... PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 alliances in Latin America, tying the Republic of Ireland working class and oppressed masses to Ligue trotskyste de France...... Le Bolchevik, B.P. 135-10 their "own" bourgeoisie from Bolivia in 75463 Paris Cedex 10, France Spartacist League 1952 to Chile in 1970-73, to the latest Spartacist Group India/Lanka ...... write to Spartacist, New York enthusing over Lula's Popular Front in Lega trotskista d'ltalia ...... Walter Fidacaro Public Offices Brazil. C.P. 1591, 20101 Milano, Italy -MARXIST L1TERATURE The struggle to forge an authentic Bol Spartacist Group Japan ...... Spartacist Group Japan shevik party through the fusion of PO Box 49, Akabane Yubinkyoku Bay Area declassed intellectuals with a proletarian Kita-ku, Tokyo 115, Japan Thurs.: 5:30-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. core requires a hard battle again~t the per Grupo Espartaquista de Mexico ...... H. Herrera, Apdo. Postal 453 1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street) nicious tradition of capitulation to the 06002 Mexico 1, D.F., Mexico Oakland, California Phone: (510) 839-0851 social values of the local ruling c1asses Spartacist/Moscow ...... write to Le Bolchevik, Paris Chicago in Latin America the inheritance of Span- Spartakusowska Grupa Polski...... Platforma Spartakusowcow Tues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m. • ish feudal colonialism overlaid with the Skrytka Pocztowa 148 Sat.: 11 :00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. last century of North American overlord 02-588 Warszawa 48, Poland 328 S. Jefferson St., Suite 904 Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 454-4930 ship. In the fight to forge our international Spartacist/South Africa ...... Spartacist, PostNet Suite 248 tendency, the ICL has struggled against Carlton Center New York City Level 100, Shop 140 such anti-Leninist proclivities, from Sri Commissioner Street Tues.: 6:30-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1 :00-5:00 p.m. Lanka to Mexico to Brazil. 41 Warren St. (one block below Johannesburg 2001, South Africa Chambers SI. near Church St.) This in large part is what has impelled Spartacist League/U.S...... ,. Spartacist League, Box 1377 GPO New York, NY Phone: (212) 267-1025 us to make the writings of Cannon avail New York, NY 10116, USA l able in Spanish and other languages. The 6 DECEMBER 1996 7 Assistant General Secretary Bob Crow, have joined the SLP. The strikes in Lon ------Britain----- don Underground, one of the few public services which have not been privatised, could have provided an opportunity to launch a counteroffensive against the impact of privatisation in rail and against the anti-union laws. Yet the tube strikes were conducted within a framework Blair's "New Labour" which accepted the hated anti-union laws. RMT leaders in the Underground in structed station staff (who had themselves voted to strike) to go to work, while RMT drivers were on strike. Pitting one section Kicks Unions in the Teeth of the union against another weakens the power of the union and is poisonous to workers' consciousness. At the TUC conference, Arthur Scargill argued for a one-day strike each week in support of the Liverpool dockers. When a Spartacist spokesman asked in an Octo ber 16 SLP London meeting if this was to be fought for by the SLP's supporters in the RMT, Scargill adamantly replied that this demand applied only to the TGWU, the dockers' union. The perspec tive which leaves each union to fight its "own" battles was the recipe which led to the defeat of the 1984-85 miners strike. It was used by so-called left TGWU leader Ron Todd to betray dock ers strikes which occurred twice during the miners strike. Todd sent the dockers back to work on both occasions, leaving the miners isolated and paving the way for union-busting in the docks in 1989. van der Meer Labour leader Tony Blair seeks to break party's ties to unions, openly The miners were defeated by the Thatcher government, its cops and denounces strikes. Above~ Demonstration by striking postal workers in London. courts, with active assistance from Neil Kinnock'sLabour Party and the TUC bureaucrats, including the "lefts" who Jones/FSP preached solidarity with the miners but left them to fight alone. As we wrote in The following article is reprinted in the political configuration in this country severing all links with us." They may Workers Hammer (No. 67, March 1985): abridged form from Workers Hammer out of which a revolutionary Marxist and be shaken by Blair's deliberate kick in "The NUM [National Union of Mine No. 153 (November-December 1996), internationalist workers party can be the teeth, but the TUC bureaucracy's workers] leadership under Arthur Scar newspaper of the Spartacist League/ constituted. "New Unionism" accepts New Labour's gill took this strike about as far it could Britain. A great deal of social tinder has accu basic political premise: the trade unions go within a perspective of militant trade mulated during the long years of Tory must not pose a challenge to the "free union reformism, and still it lost. Why? Because militancy alone is not enough. rule, which have brought devastating market" of capitalist greed. These lead From day one it was clear that the NUM WORKERS 47 attacks on the NHS [National Health ers cannot mount a fight against Blair was up against the full power of the Service] and welfare services. Despite ism. Indeed, by the time of the Labour capitalist state. What was needed was IlAMMER "Y~ the Tories' boast of "no-strike" Britain, Party conference all the TUC heavy a party of revolutionary activists rooted in the trade unions which fought tooth this summer there was a series of one weights had knuckled under. TGWU and nail to mobilise other unions in At the Blackpool TUC [Trades Union day strikes in London Transport, the Post leader Bill Morris spoke for all of them strike action alongside the NUM. But Congress] conference this year, Tony Office and the fire brigades. The public when he said "unions would now con all Arthur Scargill had was the Labour Blair's New Labour launched a union sector unions are made up of some of the centrate on helping Labour to win the Party, and it would rather see the NUM most oppressed sections of the work general election." The message to strik dead than organise to take on the bosses' bashing offensive designed to convince state in struggle." force-blacks, Asians, women-many of ing workers is to go to hell-comply City [of London financial district] bank Today, to Scargill's credit, the SLP whom have worked for decades for with the anti-union laws and elect a ers and big business that Labour in power stands for the abolition of the monarchy extremely low pay. These strikes have unioncbashing Labour government. can be just as anti-union as the Tories. and the House of Lords, but his version been defensive battles against the rav Blair's attack on tube [London subway] of "socialism" harks back to the early ages of privatisation, which attempts to Break with Labourism, strikers earlier this year was widely post-World War II period, when much of destroy the unions, to atomise the work "Old" and New described as unprecedented for a Labour British industry was nationalised and ing class and to impose scandalously low leader in opposition. Meanwhile, his At the TUC conference, in the debate free health care and other welfare bene employment spokesman David Blunkett wages and working conditions reminis on the minimum wage, Arthur Scargill fits were introduced by a Labour govern cent of the 19th century. But even such told postal workers to end their strikes received rapturous applause when he ment. The welfare reforms of the 1940s limited and episodic strikes were too asserted, "I'm fed up to the back teeth and conduct yet another ballot of their were introduced to forestall the "spread much for New Labour, who are vying membership. This followed New La with people telling us not to rock the boat of Communism" and went hand-in-hand bour's pledge to retain the Tories' hated with the. Tories for the reputation of before a general election." After the con with the crushing of potential social revo being "tough on the unions." ference, ScargiU's SLP announced the anti-union legislation and effectively to lutions in Western Europe. ban strikes in the p\lblic sector by impos New Labour's declared commitment recruitment of bakers union leader Jo The world has changed dramatically to union-busting rankled even the most Marino and Liverpool dockers leader ing binding arbitration. To top it all off,' since then with the counterrevolutionary slavishly pro-Labour union bureaucrats. Jimmy Nolan, as well as many other trade Blair's shadow junior employment min destruction of the Soviet Union, sold out TUC general secretary John Monks com unionists. ister, Stephen Byers, took the opportunity by Stalinism. The problem with Scargill to pronounce what everyone knows is key plained that delegates in Blackpool Over half the RMT [Rail, Maritime and and the SLP is that they look not towards to the "Blair project": the breaking of "were shaken by the wild talk of Labour Transport] national executive, including a revolutionary future, but to a social Labour's historic link to the unions. democratic past. For revolutionary Marx In the midst of this orgy of union ists, the struggle for socialism, to put the bashing, Arthur Scargill stood out as a working class in power, necessitates focal point of opposition to New Labour going forward to new October Revolu at the TUC conference. Earlier this year, tions, to place the working class in Scargill split from Labour and launched power, in Britain and throughout the the Socialist Labour Party· (SLP) "in world. response to New Labour's betrayal of Scargill rejects this internationalist the commitment to common ownership, programme. While the SLP opposes the abandonment of />ocialism and open sup European Union (EU) as a bosses' club port for the 'free market' and capitalism" and makes statements against "narrow (Socialist News, September 1996). nationalism," they in fact push little Despite the very clear intentions of England protectionism. Such nationalism Tony Blair, the Labour Party remains a is counterposed to the fight against the bourgeois workers party, i.e., based on government's racist, anti-immigrant on the trade unions but saddled with a pro slaught. It is reflected in the SLP's con capitalist leadership. For communists, stitution, which restricts membership to breaking the stranglehold of the Labour people who have "resided in Wales, Party over the working class is a key Scotland, England or Ireland for more strategic task. Although the programme than one year." of Scargill's SLP is at bottom simply that of "old" Labour as against the New Forge a Revolutionary Labour Party of Tony Blair, this split Workers Party! from the Labour Party offers the pos Liverpool dockers' hard-fought struggle has won international support. The hallmark of the ostensible social sibility for a fundamental realignment 6f Spartacist League/Britain calls for solidarity action to shut down the docks. ist left in Britain has historically been 8 WORKERS VANGUARD ---British Left Debates Scargill's SLP-- Workers Power: Drummer Boys for Tony Blair LONDON-As Tony Blair's "New La port for Labour. While carefuIly pepper soft-pedaling any criticism of Scargill's [Labour Party leader] Kinnock, had the bour" moves ever more aggressively to ing his presentation with references to programme of "old" Labour reformism, same position for a scab ballot in the refashion itself in the image of BiIl Clin the need for a revolutionary party, WP they remain part of the Militant-led early weeks of that strike." WP also ton's openly capitalist Democratic Party speaker Paul Morris made clear his Socialist Alliance, which is committed to embraced counterrevolutionary Polish in the U.S., the numerous "far left" organisation's real programme. Enthus electing a Blair government. Solidarnosc, even as Thatcher and the groups which worship at the altar of La ing that the mass of the working class The debate itself was the epitome of Cold War Labourites seized on Scargill's bour's "broad church" have been thrown will vote Labour, Morris hailed this as a the "chummy British left" in full-colour correct denunciation of Solidarnosc as into a tizzy. The centrist and reformist left "class offensive against the Tories." And action, with the different groups polite "anti-socialist" to witchhunt the NUM in Britain have always held as their elev to aIlay any hint of a doubt where WP ly calling each other "revolutionaries" leader on the eve of the miners strike. enth commandment, "Vote Labour to keep stands, Morris raved that it "wiIl be a while restricting themselves to intermin Even today, after the Soviet Union has the Tories out," viewing as cardinal sin great victory despite anything else when able discussions over "tactics." As WP been destroyed by capitalist counterrevo any attempt to split the L-abour Party. So the class puts Blair in power." nattered on about "intersecting" illusions lution, WP continues to be driven by Sta when miners leader Arthur Scargill did Even the speaker for the opportunist in Blair, the CPGB urged WP to join it as linophobia. With Scargill now "guilty" just that earlier this year, breaking with CPGB had an easy job of exposing the bloc partners in the "left" wing of not only of refusing to enlist in the impe Blair to found the Socialist Labour Party rialists' anti-Soviet crusade but also of (SLP), it rocked the Labour-loyal left. breaking from the Labour monolith, WP The growing frenzy of groups like the is getting downright unhinged. In his right-centrist Workers Power (WP) in speech, Morris worked himself into an the face of a deepening split in Labour's almost literal fit of Stalinophobia, foam camp was evident at an October 30 pub ing that the left social-democratic union lic debate in London with Labour Left leader's politics are "a complete Stalinist Briefing and the pro-SLP Communist disaster for the working class." Then Party of Great Britain (CPGB). For a Morris launched into a Dr. Strange love change, unable to get the agreement of tirade against an SLP public event its debate partners, WP did not exclude attended by former Communist Party supporters of the Spartacist League/ members and other leftists several weeks Britain, as it has done at its "public" earlier, fulminating that the meeting had meetings for years. The motives for been "teeming with the most murderous WP's policy of cowardly exclusionism Stalinists"! were manifest at this debate. Rarely of WP and the CPGB also stand to the late have we seen a display of beIIy right of Scargill on the question of the crawling before Blair by ostensible "rev Maastricht Treaty, with its (utopian) aim olutionaries" equal to WP's that night. Guardian (London) of setting up a unified German-dominated With Blair attacking the trade unions Split from Blair by British miners' leader Arthur Scargill (left) and his Socialist capitalist European superstate. In prac even before getting into the prime minis Labour Party has thrown Labour-loyal fake-left into turmoil. tice, Maastricht means vicious austerity ter's residence at Downing Street, with measures against the working class and "New Labour" having thrown out even tortured twists and turns of Workers ScargiIl's party. For these outfits, "tac "Fortress Europe" anti-immigrant racism. the party's fig-leaf commitment to nation Power's line on the SLP: at first they tics" are a be-all and end-all aimed at As a second SLiB floor speaker noted: alisation of industry ("Clause IV"), one welcomed it and caIled for "a revolu covering over their refusil to break from "Scargill has a nationalist position, a very WP member after another nonetheless got tionary SLP," then they dismissed it as social democracy. Contrasting Weekly reactionary protectionist position, which up to insist on the supposedly massive an undemocratic "Stalinist" sect, and re Worker's uncritical stance toward the is coupled with a correct understand iIlusions workers entertain in a future cently, noticing that trade-union militants SLP's Brenda Nixon in Hemsworth in ing ... that Maastricht actually represents a Labour government. are joining, they have pledged their aid February with the SLlB's line of critical massive anti-working-class attack. These For Marxists, the task is precisely to to a "revolutionary platform" within the support, a Spartacist floor speaker at the ar~ organisations-the Communist Party dispel any such illusions with the aim of SLP. AIl the while, WP has continued to debate explained: "Basically we thought of Great Britain and Workers Power splitting Labour's working-class base stump for Labour, including supporting many of the things she stood on were who ahstained on the referendums over from its pro-capitalist misleaders. Work Blair's candidate against the SLP in a supportable and we welcomed the fact Maastricht, in the case of Workers Power ers Power, in contrast, has dedicated parliamentary by-election last February that she said 'no vote to Labour.' But we telling us that maybe the workers would itself to reinforcing and bolstering sup- in Hemsworth. As for the CPGB, while pointed out that the SLP's demands can be under better conditions to fight after not be achieved under capitalism." "The the implementation of Maastricht." . key question," our comrade asserted, "is Given their capitulation to anti how to build a working-class, revolution Sovietism during the Cold War, it is no ary party capable of overthrowing the wonder that the centrists of Workers bourgeoisie." Power today find themselves increas The SLiB speaker pointed out that ingly disoriented in the face of intensify VOTE both WP and the CPGB have a history of ing interimperialist rivalries ushered in capitulating to bourgeois pressure, taking by the destruction of the Soviet Union. positions to the right of ScargiIl, particu In their eyes, Maastricht-with its drive larly noting their support to the capitalist for increased capitalist exploitation and UR rulers' demand during the 1984-85 anti-immigrant repression-represents National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) an opening for class struggle, and a LAt strike for a strikebreaking "vote" after racist, union-bashing Blair government the miners had already voted with their would be a "great victory." For our part, feet by walking off the job. As our we wiIl continue to fight for real vic BUT ORGAIISE Centrism vs. Trotskyism during 1992 speaker said: "Politics is not decided in tories for workers and the oppressed, British elections. Workers Power always the arena of bourgeois Parliament, it's seeking to win Labour's base to a revo mFIGHT! stands by Labour traitors, SL/B fights to decided in the course of class struggle. lutionary workers party with a pro VOle NellistlFieldS ill &MntrY/LiVerpooI split Labour and forge a revolutionary And in the 1984 miners strike both of gramme to sweep away decrepit British workers party. these organisations tailed Thatcher, tailed imperialism .•
abject loyalty to Labour. A prime exam ipation in the SLP was more important trifling advantage, most likely when the tive interests of the working class base, ple is Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers than maintaining a propaganda circle" SLP comes under heavy fire from the centrally organised in the trade unions, and the policies and actions of the Party, who persist with the tedious sing (1917 No. 18, 1996), then berates the right. Arthur Scargill upholds the princi social-patriotic leadership. We wish to song: "Vote Labour to get the Tories out." Spartacist League as "abstentionist" ple of not crossing a picket line. Not so win the base to our programme and to Since their inception as a split from the because we haven't liquidated our party! the IBT. Last winter they frothed at the the building of a Marxist party in COUIl Cliffites, Workers' Power (WP) has Their own organisational dissolution into mouth when we nailed them for crossing lerposilioll to the Labour Party, in the preached strategic unity with the Labour the SLP reflects their political adaptation picket lines in the New York City build course of mobilising for class struggle and through the exposure of Labour Party, and view with horror any split to it. The 1917 article, for exafllple, ing workers strike. Inside the SLP, for treachery by the communist vanguard." in Labour's ranks. As the SLP widens praises the SLP's caIl for British troops mer IBTers joined Stalinophobic anti - Spartacisl No. 33, the split within Labour, WP's attitude to out of Northern Ireland but fails to point communists-supporters of Solidarnosc Spring 1982 Scargill's party gets more tortured. WP's out that the SLP supports the imperialist counterrevolution and advocates of The purpose of the Spartacist League, attitude to the SLP is coloured by their "peace" process which is premised on the imperialist intervention for "poor little British section of the International Com abiding hatred for "the Stalinist" Arthur British Army remaining in place. Where Bosnia"-in a common election slate at munist League, is to pursue this perspec ScargilI. What bothers WP is not Scar we have pointed out that the SLP's "resi the founding conference. tive, in order to bring about the over gill's reformist, "old" Labour framework, dency clause" would prohibit immigrants We Spartacists have always had a throw of bloody British imperialism, its but the fact that he is splitting the Labour and asylum-seekers from joining, 1917 sharp, aggressive programmatic counter monarch, House of Lords and Parlia camp by standing candidates against New replies dismissively that it "could well be position to Labourism. As we wrote in ment, and to replace it with a federa Labour [see "Workers Power: Drummer dropped at the next party congress." a 1981 document, "Revolutionaries and tion of workers republics. For workers Boys for Tony Blair," above]. Today the IBT is adapting to SLP ref- the Labour Party": governments based on workers coun The International "Bolshevik" Ten - ormism, but they could easily swing "We seek \0 exacerbate the contradic cils (soviets), part of a Socialist United dency (IBT), having decided that "partic- back towards mainstream Labourism for - tions between the aspirations and objec- States of Europe! • 6 DECEMBER 1996 9 hoods in antiCipation of the Chicago Chicago ... Bulls NBA championship celebration. ( continue.d from page 12) In April and May 1996, the City of Chicago received requests from two sep prevent and limit any anti-Klan protest. arate Klan groups for use of the Daley When the City's efforts were foiled by the Center Plaza on June 29 and September anti-Klan demonstration, the City and 21. Following discussions between the police retaliated with these prosecutions. Public Building Commission and the Mayor's Office, the City adopted a pol Police Attack icy to limit or restrict public knowledge Anti-Klan Protesters of this information. The news that the Anti-Klan protesters from a variety of Klan might rally at the Daley Center on backgrounds and political viewpoints June 29 was thus made public only as an joined at the Daley Center. These protest aside in a June 28 Tribune report on traf ers came out to protest because they fic congestion in the Loop during Taste believed that the Klan is a racist terrorist of Chicago [an annual street festival]. organization which poses a deadly threat Police approached the June 29 dem to blacks, immigrants, Jews, unionists, onstration as a "test run" of their tacti gays and leftists in Chicago. From the cal methods of suppressing and control hooded nightriders who fought Recon ling political expression In the context struction after the Civil War, through the of the Democratic Convention. On infor KKK terror of the 1920s when the Klan Chicago cops attacked anti-Klan protesters, protected KKK race-terrorists on mation and belief, Chicago police are gained strength in Northern cities like June 29. using the June 29 arrests and arrests of Chicago, serving as shock troops against protesters during the Democratic Con blacks and immigrant workers (espe throat inflammation and resulting suf demonstrators. One of these youth, Mal vention as a basis to argue that the "Red cially Catholics), to the 1963 Klan bomb focation. To further punish Herson and colm Goff, took McNulty's photograph Squad" should be officially reestablished ing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in the other arrested anti-Klan protesters, while McNulty was sitting in a police in Chicago. Birmingham, to the Klan's 1979 Greens police placed them in a patrol wagon car. McNulty immediately got out of the There can be no question that the First boro Massacre--the Ku Klux Klan are directly in the hot sun, leaving them police car and pursued Goff, shouting Amendment secures the right of these organized lynchers, bombers and murder there for two hours, with the engine run that Goff would be arrested and that he Defendants and other anti-Klan protesters ers. Even this year, the Klan has been ning and the windows closed, despite the had "threatened" McNulty. to gather and express their opposition to active in the rash of black church burn fact that the temperature that day was in Defendant Lyons, a supporter of the Re the race-terror of the Ku Klux Klan. The ings in the South. the high 90s, creating a near-suffocating fuse and Resist organization and a known only basis for these charges is to retaliate The anti-Klan demonstration began at heat. anti-racist and anti-police-brutality ac against the Defendants and other anti about 2:00 p.m., well before the Klan Over the next hour and a half, the anti tivist in Chicago, saw this vindictive Klan protesters for exercising their right appeared. About 50 anti-Klan demonstra Klan demonstration grew in size to over arrest and verbally protested it. In re to protest the Klan, and to "cover" the tors, representing a number of groups, 100 demonstrators. At the point that sponse, several police officers immedi police officers' own acts of misconduct. rallied peacefully on the sidewalk adjoin the Klan left the Plaza, police brandish ately seized Lyons, threw him to the ing the Daley Center, chanting and carry ing their clubs massed in formation and ground, and then arrested him, pushing * * * ing signs and banners. Defendant Her created a human wall at the south end of him down spread-eagled on the front of a The anti-Klan defendants are ,being son, who is labor coordinator for the the anti-Klan demonstration. Without police car, injuring him in the process. persecuted for acting in defense of Partisan Defense Committee, was con any action or provocation by the anti McNulty then pressed a false charge blacks, Hispanics, Jews, trade union spicuous as a central organizer of this Klan demonstrators, police attacked the against Lyons for "obstructing" the arrest ists and gays. Join the effort to defend anti-Klan demonstration. anti-Klan demonstrators, pushing the of Goff. the Anti-Klan Three-bring this cause After about two hours, police erected anti-Klan demonstration backward, and to your unions, student groups and two lines of metal barricades on the striking demonstrators with police clubs. Suppressing Political Protest community organizations. Send protest Plaza to divide the anti-Klan demonstra This police attack created a dangerous The June 29 anti-Klan demonstration statements demanding that the charges tors (east) from the Klansmen (west). situation, causing demonstrators to fall took place at a time when the City be dropped to Richard Devine, State's Despite the barricaded division of the backward, with the police continuing to was attempting to build up its security, Attorney of Cook County, Richard J. Plaza, about 15 uniformed Klansmen de swing their clubs at fallen demonstrators. limit and control dissident political activ Daley Center, 55 W. Randolph Street, liberately marched onto the Daley Center At the beginning of this attack, police ity, and limit unfavorable publicity in Chicago, IL 60602. Funds for the de on the east, anti-Klan side of the bar (including Commander McNulty) sin preparation for the Democratic National fense are urgently needed! Send dona ricades. The Klansmen, now wearing gled out Defendant Dennis Glass for Convention. Over 2,800 Chicago police tions (earmarked "Anti-Klan Protest Klan in~ignia, marched in tight mili arrest. Glass was singled out for arrest officers were receiving special two-day ers") and copies of protest statements tary formation in three lines, armed with solely because he was a black youth and training sessions in crowd control just to the Partisan Defense Committee. bolt-studded shields and long, heavy was one of the most enthusiastic anti around June 29 in anticipation of the Contact the PDC in Chicago at P.O. "flagpole" lances which they used as Klan demonstrators. Police subjected Convention, including training on tactics Box 802867, Chicago, IL 60602-2867, weapons. When anti-Klan protesters ap Glass to a choke hold and struck Glass used against the June 29 protesters (such phone (312) 454-4931; or in New York proached to voice their opposition to the after his arrest. as use of plastic handcuffs). Earlier that at P.O. Box 99, Canal Stree~ Station, Klansmen, the Klansmen provocatively Among the youth whom McNulty per month, police imposed a virtual state of New York, NY 10013-0099, phone (212) taunted black protesters, saying, "Come sonally injured were members of a group martial law in westside ghetto neighbor- 406-4252 .• and get it, boy," and then attacked the of about a dozen or more interns from anti-Klan protesters with their lances. A the AFL-CIO Union Summer program. number of anti-Klan demonstrators were McNulty struck a young black woman injured in the head or hands by the Union Summer intern in the chest with a ing class, not just union resolutions and Klansmen's attacks. The anti-Klan dem club, and went out of his way to step on Geronimo ... letters of support in Geronimo's defense onst~ators successfully defended them the foot of another black woman Union (continued from page 12) but the mobilization of union members selves and their demonstration against Summer intern. Another police officer in action to combat this racist frame-up. this Klan attack. struck an Asian Union Summer woman in Orange County after Judge Michael From the destruction of welfare to inten When the altercation had already in the neck with a club. At about 6:45 Cowell disqualified himself and the sifying state repression, America's rulers stopped, Commander McNulty' ap p.m., the anti-Klan demonstration dis entire L.A. Superior Court bench on wield racist reaction against the black proached Defendant Herson from be persed. The group of Union Summer the grounds that Kalustian, now an L.A. population and desperate immigrants to hind, and then sprayed Herson directly in youth began to walk back to the hostel Superior Court judge, presented a "con further the brutal exploitation of the the face with pepper spray. Herson had where they were staying. Some of the flict of interest." working class as a whole. The more the his mouth open when McNulty sprayed Union Summer youth noticed Com Geronimo has been denied parole 14 government, its courts and cops get away him, creating a potentially lethal situa mander McNulty as the officer who had times. Five previous attempts to demon with framing up and keeping those like tion because pepper spray can cause been particularly hostile and had injured strate his innocence in the courts and Geronimo imprisoned, the more the state expose the government frame-up which will act with similar impunity against the put him behind bars have been turned entire workers movement. An injury to down. As the Partisan Defense Commit one is an injury to all! Freedom now for SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY tee wrote in a statement last May follow Geronimo ji Jaga! ing the refusal of the L.A. Superior Court Geronimo will be at the hearing on National Office Los Angeles Oakland to hear Geronimo's case to overturn his December 16. Mobilize in solidarity with Box 1377 GPO Box 29574 Box 29497 his cause-come to the court for the New York, NY 10116 Los Feliz Sta. Oakland, CA 94604 conviction: ' (212) 732-7860 Los Angeles, CA 90029 (510) 839-0851 "Many supporters of Geronimo thought hearing! Monday, December 16,9 a.m., that the unambiguous evidence of his (213) 380-8239 Superior Court, Department 35, 700 Boston San Francisco innocence, announced by attorneys John Civic Center Drive West, Santa Ana. nie Cochran and Stuart Hanlon at a press Box 390840, Central Sta. Box 77494 conference which included significant Funds for legal defense should be sent Cambridge, MA 02139 New York San Francisco,~ CA 94107 participation by important witnesses and to Prisoner Litigation Trust Fund, c/o (617) 666-9453 Box 3381, (415) 777-9367 community activists, would lead in short Stuart Hanlon, 214 Duboce Street, San Church St. Sta. order to Geronimo's release. We in the Francisco, CA 94103 .• Chicago New York, NY 10008 Washington, D.C. Partisan Defense Committee, who have Box 6441, Main PO (212) 267-1025 Box 75073 worked for Geronimo's freedom for over Chicago, IL 60680 Washington, D.C. 20013 a decade, would have surely welcomed (312) 454-4930 (202) 872-8240 such a turn of events. But our understand ing of the nature of the state, race and class in America has led us to see that WV E-Mail Address TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA/LiGUE TROTSKYSTE DU CANADA there is no justice in the capitalist courts." - "Mobilize Labor/Black Power You can now reach Workers Toronto Montreal Vancouver to Free Geronimo!" Vanguard bye-mail. (WV No. 645, 10 May) Box 7198, Station A C.P. Les Atriums Box 2717, Main P.O. Our address is: Toronto, ON M5W 1X8 B.P . .32066 Vancouver, BC V6B 3X2 The fight to free this courageous man (416) 593-4138 Montreal, QC H2L 4V5 (604) 687-0353 must actively bring to bear the social [email protected] power of the organized multiracial work- 10 WORKERS VANGUARD the country. In New York City, more Welfare than 20,000 unionized municipal jobs have been slashed in the past few years, with the work now being done by Bashers ... welfare recipients slaving for next to (continued from page 1 ) nothing. Now this scheme has been formally institutionalized in the New programs-and to fight for free, quality York transit system, as the leadership of medical care, for housing, education and Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local jobs for all at union wages, and then 100, potentially the most powerful union some-requires a leadership that is im in the city, has pushed through a con bued with the understanding that it is tract mandating that unionized subway necessary to break the power of the jobs will be replaced by "workfare" bourgeoisie, whose rule is based on the crews working without wages and union exploitation of the working class. It will protection. take a thoroughgoing socialist revolu tion to rip industry out of the hands of Fight for Revolutionary ,:r:.~ the greedy few and turn the t'remen Leadership! dous wealth of this country over to If the labor movement, crippled by ;:::~;~ those who labor to produce it, to create a .. decades of unchallenged attacks, is to be .\.'''.-''~'''- ..... ,.:-."'( « ... !r:' U11'. workers state which reorganizes society ,.,~ revitalized, it must take up a struggle on 1\\ . on the basis of a planned, collectivized .. behalf of all the oppressed. Yet the pro WV Photo economy. capitalist labor tops increasingly act not Hospital workers rally against layoffs, killer'" cuts in New York City, June 12. only as the bourgeoisie's political police Axing Welfare, within the trade unions, but as overseers "moratorium on workfare right now." In Driving Down Wages strikebreakers and fascists and to serve as of slave-labor programs for the racist rul fact, Hill's weak-kneed "moratorium" the nuclei of a proletarian army-which The direct link between the slashing of ers. At bottom, the union misleaders call was meant to cover up his own role addressed the felt needs of workers and social welfare measures and the destruc share the outlook of their capitalist mas in collaborating with Giuliani for the past the oppressed and pointed to the need to tion of hard-won union gains is revealed ters, seeking to bolster the profitability two years in implementing "workfare" at seize state power from the bourgeoisie in one pair of statistics. Since 1972, wel of corporate America in its competition formerly unionized municipal jobs. When and create a socialist planned economy. fare benefits have plummeted by half; on the world market and striving to the TWU tops accepted their new contract This was codified in the 1938 Transi during the same time, real wages have enforce the bourgeoisie's economic dic sellout, Giuliani and Hill both screamed tional Program, the founding document fallen almost 20 percent. According to tates on the working class. The bureau bloody murder because the deal threat of Trotsky's Fourth International. the Economic Policy Institute, nearly one cracy's political allegiance to the capital ened to expose their own ongoing back Today, the biggest obstacle to mobiliz in three workers today makes less than ist system is manifested particularly in room sweetheart agreement. ing the unions to launch such battles is $7.28 an hour, as compared to fewer than its craven support to Clinton's Demo To organize the unorganized and de the craven trade-union bureaucracy-the one in four in 1973. This, too, is an cratic Party. fend the rights of the poor requires mobi- labor lieutenants of the capitalist c1ass endemic feature of capitalism, character who would sooner die than allow. any ized by Marx as the tendency toward struggle which challenges the "sacred" immiseration of the working class. property rights of the capitalists. In More and more people are working the absence of any organized resis harder and harder for minimum or sub tance, every social program grudgingly minimum wages, and the expansion of conceded by FDR in the tremendous "workfare" and forcing millions off wel working-class battles of the 1930s is on fare altogether will serve to drive down the chopping block, as the racist rulers wages even more. As an article in the with Democrat Clinton as their chief New York Times (17 November) ob executive-prepare to eliminate the last served: "When welfare recipients start shreds of any social "safety net" for the looking for jobs to replace their shrink poor. Welfare, unemployment insurance ing welfare benefits, they will be com and other social measures were set up peting with the working poor, who are during the Depression to piece off the barely surviving on what they make working class, as the bourgeoisie feared now." the spectre of "red revolution." In most cases, there are in fact no jobs In the aftermath of the counterrevolu to be found. And even where minimum tionary destruction of the Soviet bureau wage jobs are available, for most welfare cratically degenerated workers state and recipients this. would mean a precipitous imperialist triumphal ism over the "death decline in their already dismal standard of communism," the men who run Wall of living. A case in point is 24-year-old Street and the Fortune 500 corporations Karen Goff in Kentucky. While manag now believe they can do anything to the ing to feed, clothe and house herself and workers, the poor, the elderly, the black her five children on a monthly welfare Welfare reCipients in Washington, D.C. forced to do municipal workers' jobs. and Hispanic masses without the slight check of $432 plus food stamps, she con Slave-labor "workfare" means union-busting. est danger of serious socialturmoil. But tinued her schooling, earning a high these policies are creating enormous school diploma and a two-year college Despite the pretense of offering a lizing the social power of the working pressure at the base of society: people degree. Now her hopes of finishing her "socialist" alternative to the capitalist class. A historical example of this can be don't like the idea that there is no future college education and preparing for a Democrats, various reformist groups sim found in the turbulent class battles which for themselves and their kids. The need decent job have been dashed, as the state ply attempt to give a leftist veneer to the took place during the Great Depression of for socialist revolution to break the demands she accept any job at minimum same policy of supporting the Democrats the 1930s. When Democrat Franklin D. . power of the corrupt, racist ruling class wage. After paying for day care for her as a "lesser evil." A prime example is Roosevelt established the Works Progress is posed ever more !illarply today. What kids, that would leave her with $40 a the Workers World Party (WWP) of Administration (WPA) in 1935, seeking is needed is a revolutionary workers week! Sam Marcy. Over the years, the Marcy to use the unemployed to drive down party that champions the cause of all the Meanwhile, in forcing poor people to ites have built one front-group "coalition" wages by paying rates even below those oppressed, a party which fights to sweep scramble for any job, no matter how low after another designed to act as a "left" of local relief, the Trotskyists fought for away this system of racism, repression paying or demeaning, the capitalist rulers tail on the Democratic Party donkey. Dur the right of union organization on WPA and poverty, replacing it with an egalitar consciously seek to pit one section of the ing the run-up to the presidential elec projects, calling for such demands as ian socialist society.• oppressed against another. At a non-union tions, Workers World candidates made a immediate relief and unemployment in Marriott hotel in Iowa City, Bosnian ref splash by crashing Democratic Party surance paid by the employers and the ugees were imported to replace recently fundraisers to "expose" Clinton for not state and for a six-hour day and five-day deported Mexican workers. And in Vir vetoing the welfare law. week at no loss in pay. CORRECTION ginia, the state government is proposing to Recently, the WWP has helped launch Importantly, the struggle to organize The article, "For a Socialist Re place "workfare" recipients into jobs left "Workfairness," a group calling for the unemployed was directly linked to public of United Kurdistan!" (WV open after Immigration and Naturali "equal pay" and "labor rights" within the the tremendous battles to organize the No. 651, 13 September), stated that zation Service raids lead to the deporta "workfare" system. To fight insidious, industrial unions of the CIO, which were "There is also a sizable Kurdish tion of low-paid im.migrant workers. The union-busting "workfare" requires a po established through sit-down strikes, working class with a history of labor movement must be mobilized to litical struggle against the labor tops who mass pickets and other militant tactics. militant struggle in the oil fields of defend immigrant workers not only as a have signed on as straw bosses for the Writing in 1933 against the reformists of Kirkuk and other strategic cen necessary defense of democratic rights, capitalist rulers in this scheme. yet the his day, then-Trotskyist leader Arne Swa ters." While there had been a large but as part of the fight to prevent the Marcyites look to just these labor traitors beck emphasized that the objectives in concentration of Kurdish workers, worsening of wage levels and working to lead a "fight" to defend "workfare" organizing the unemployed "must be many of them militant supporters conditions for all workers. Full citizen recipients. general working class objective~;, its of the Iraqi Communist Party, in ship rights for all immigrants! When the TWU "workfare" deal was struggle part of the general working class Kirkuk through the late 1950s, they The capitalists' intent is to pit union announced, Workers World (3 October) struggles for the revolution" (see "Organ were by and large driven out by the ized workers against impoverished, pre crowed that "a number of unions may be izing the Unemployed in the Great nationalist Ba'ath regime. today dominantly black and Hispanic welfare preparing to open a struggle to block the Depression," WV Nos. 73 and 74, 18 July headed by Saddam Hussein, as part recipients, inflaming racist reaction and spread of workfare and demand union and I August 1975). of its policy of "Arabization" of the increasing the rate of exploitation of all rights for workfare workers." In particu The Trotskyists advanced a series of oil fields (see "Kurdish Workers in workers. The union-busting character of lar, the WWP hailed as an "initial step" in transitional demands-such as a sliding . the Iraqi Revolution of J 958-59," the current welfare "reforms" can be this "struggle" an appeal by AFSCME scale of wages and hours to combat in WV No. 370, 11 January 1985). seen most clearly in the "workfare" pro- ~ city workers chief Stanley Hill to NYC flation and unemployment, and the call grams which are being instituted across Republican mayor Giuliani to declare a for workers defense guards to defeat 6 DECEMBER 1996 11 WfJlIllEIS "/1"'111)
Defend Chicago Anti-Klan Three- Drop the Charges!
DECEMBER 2-In Cook County Circuit ernment and police to stifle and sup Court today, defense attorneys for three press any social protest in the months Chicago Anti-Klan Three: Jeffrey Lyons, Dennis Glass, Gene Herson. participants in the June 29 protest in leading up to the Democratic National Chicago's Daley Plaza against the race Convention in August. downtown Chicago on June 29, 1996. and the Klan had left the Daley Plaza, terrorist Ku Klux Klan moved to dis Defendants face completely false charges police attacked the anti-Klan demonstra miss trumped-up charges of assaulting These three consolidated cases arise of assaulting, battering and obstructing tion, assaulting several anti-Klan dem police. In response, the court granted a out of a demonstration against the Ku police officers. In reality, as Defendants onstrators, particularly young minority defense request for an evidentiary hear Klux Klan on the Daley Center Plaza in will show at an evidentiary hearing on men and women, and arresting Defendant ing on the motion, to be held on Janu this motion, these charges are brought Dennis Glass on false charges of aggra ary 23. solely (1) in retaliation for the Defen vated assault and battery, for no reason While charges against six other anti dants' exercise of First Amendment rights except that he was a vocal and enthusias Klan protesters were dropped at a previ by participating in the anti-Klan dem tic anti-Klan protester who carried a sign ous court session, Jeffrey Lyons and Gene onstration, and (2) to conceal and jus protesting police brutality. Then, after Herson continue to face up to a year in tify police physical attacks on the anti the demonstration had dispersed, police prison and Dennis Glass faces up to two Klan demonstrators, targeted particularly attacked a group of AFL-CIO Union years in prison for having taken part in at minority youth and known anti-racist Summer interns because one of the group, the June 29 protest, in which a violent activists. a black youth, had photographed the same KKK provocation was decisively routed. These cases arise from a series of Commander who had earlier assaulted The anti-Klan protest was initiated on police attacks on the anti-Klan demon several demonstrators. Defendant Jeffrey less than 24 hours' notice by the Partisan strators. The first came immediately after Lyons was arrested solely because he ver Defense Committee and the Chicago the anti-Klan demonstrators defended bally protested the vindictive and unlaw Labor Black Struggle League. Before themselves against a violent Klan provo ful arrest of the photographer. today's proceedings got under way, some cation. At that point, First District Com The police retaliation against the anti 35 demonstrators rallied outside the court mander Patrick McNulty pepper-sprayed Klan protesters stemmed from a City pol to demand: 'Drop the charges against the Defendant Eugene Herson, an organizer icy to limit and control political protest in Anti-Klan Three! -of the anti-Klan demonstration, and later preparation for the Democratic National We reprint below extracts from the caused Herson's arrest on false charges of Convention in Chicago because of the defense motion submitted in today's ses . ~. battering the Commander. The sole rea fear of adverse publicity and unfavorable sion. The legal papers demonstrate that son for Herson's arrest was to retaliate comparison to the Democratic Conven the prosecution of these anti-racist :'1 against an organizer of the anti-Klan tion in 1968. To avoid unfavorable pub activists is not only a blatantly mali WV Photo demonstration. licity the City limited public knowledge cious and vindictive act but one in POC-initiated protest, June 29, routed About 90 minutes later, after the anti of the Klan's planned rally, hoping to a series of attempts by the city gov- violent KKK provocation in Chicago. Klan demonstration had swelled in size continued on page 10
i "'F'< . ·B··'·I······ ····I'·,'····p·...... , .....• '.'...... ,.,...... '.' ... ,....••.•. "...... •..... ,..••.•. ···'·... ·.1 ... >< ···H· .•... ~<.II '. ········B·'···d····'····· "'f'<·,',· .. ·,."N·'·'············· ,' ... ·······-.:<····1·· Freedom Now for Geronimo! Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), a former murder; the victim's husband's identifi tion by lay mInister Jim McCloskey leader of the Black Panther Party who has cation of another man as the killer one which identified the likely real killers of been behind bars for 26 years for a crime year before he ever saw a photo of the Santa Monica schoolteacher as asso the government knows he did not commit, Geronimo; and the fact that the man who ciates of Butler. has won a hearing on his request for a testified that Geronimo had confessed to The chief prosecutor of Geronimo in new trial. On December 16, California the crime, one Julius Butler, was an 1972, then-assistant L.A. district attorney Superior Court judge Everett W. Dickey informam for the LAPD since 1966 and Richard Kalustian, as well as former D.A. will begin taking testimony on Geron an informant for the FBI since at least Ronald Carroll and investigators from the imo's petition in a Santa Ana courtroom. May 1969. All of this was kno,wn at the D.A.'s office have also been ordered to Framed up by the Los Angeles Police time by the FBI and the LAPD~and was testify at the upcoming hearing. Judge Department (LAPD) and the FBI's hiddenji'om the defense. Dickey was quoted in the Los AnReles "Counter-Intelligence Program" (COIN On November 22, Judge Dickey an Times (23 November) as saying: "There TELPRO), which was aimed at destroy nounced that the court hearing will focus has to be some clarification on what ing the Panthers, Geronimo was con on the spectacular recent disclosure that efforts were made by Kalustian on But victed in 1972 of the 1968 murder of a Butler was also an informant for the L.A. ler's behalf." Referring to one investiga Santa Monica schoolteacher. The petition district attorney's office even as the D.A. tor who had knowledge of Butler's asso for a new trial details the unambiguous was prosecuting the case against Ger ciation as an informant for the D.A.'s evidence of the innocence of this unbro onimo. Butler, a one-time L.A. County office, Dickey added, "I think we have to ken fighter for black liberation whose Sheriff's Deputy who joined the Panthers hear from Bowles." only "crime" was to have challenged the in Los Angeles, was the centerpiece of the Kalustian claims he was ignorant of racist status quo in America. The petition prosecution's case against Geronimo. On Butler's relationship with the FBI. Yet documents three sets of FBI wiretaps on the witness stand in the original trial, he in September this year, Geronimo's case Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), imprisoned Panther offices showing that Geronimo denied being an informant. Geronimo's was moved from L.A. to Santa Ana for 26 years for a crime government was 400 miles away at the time of the court papers also document the investiga- continued on paRe 10 knows he did not commit. 12 6 DECEMBER 1996