25¢ No. 166 15 July 1977

LaffonliSygma KKK cross burning in Louisiana earlier this year. Chicago Nazi Fuhrer Frank Collins {left} and stormtroopers. Labor, Blacks Must Crush Fascist Vermiq Carter's America: KlanTurns Crosses on the Fourth The Invisible Empire, Knights of the Klansmen and, unfortunately, a CBS fighting the fascist terrorists, we de­ Ku Klux Klan, is crawling out from its reporter in this kamikaze attack. mand that Buddy Cochran be immedi­ cover ofdarkness on the slimy underside Cochran has now become the target ately released and the charges against ()f American society. After decades of of the state's efforts to keep Georgia safe him be dropped. . nightriding terrorism against blacks, for the Klan. The Klan mobyelled "white Another KKK rally in Columbus, Catholics, Jews and communists, the nigger" and "kill him" as this southern Ohio on July 4 was broken up by a "new" Klan has been buoyed by a recent white worker, who reportedly told police demonstration of several hundred anti­ wave of social reaction emanating from that he "had a lot of black friends," was Klan protesters. While Ohio "Imperial the highest levels of government. It was arrested and charged with 19 counts of Wizard" Dale Reusch was playing a entirely logical, therefore, that these aggravated assault. The cops are now tape of the national anthem, a largely fascistic race-haters should choose holding him on $190,000 bail. These are black section of the anti-Klan demon­ Jimmy Carter's home town of Plains, the same enforcers ofcapitalist "law and stration moved directly to the podium Georgia for a cross burning in broad order" who in their zeal to protect the and drowned out the "Star Spangled daylight on the Fourth ofJuly weekend. Klan rally had earlier threatened to Banner" with chants of "Ku Klux About 30 white-sheeted KKKers arrest blacks in the vicinity for trespass­ Klan-Scum of the Land." Thereupon swarmed around the flag-studded plat­ ing upon a "strictly white gathering of a the Klan leaders began wielding flag form for what they called a "patriotic white Christian organization" (Atlanta poles like clubs and the fight was on. display." The climax was to be the Constitution, 3 July). Anti-Klan demonstrators got hold of burning of a 20-foot cross wrapped in Many of these racist cops simply Reusch, knocked him down, stripped kerosene-soaked muslin, the dreaded exchange their blue uniforms and off his purple robes and inflicted injuries symbol of generations of racist lynch­ badges for white sheets and pointed hats that sent this dangerous race-hate ings. But as the cross was about to be after nightfall. In their hands, Cochran, monger to the hospital. A battered ignited, Buddy Cochran, a 30-year-old who is becoming a symbol of militant­ "wizard" dripping with egg yolk cried white truck mechanic who had been if. in this case, Quixotic-anti-Klan out, "Where are you my people?" parked within earshot of the genocidal action, is in danger of being brutally Immediately he was answered as Ohio filth emanating from the rally, revved up beaten and possibly killed. Moreover, State Highway Patrol troopers in full his Jaguar XKE sports car and rammed he is in any case not an apparent threat riot gear poured out ofthe statehouse to it into the back of the plywood podium. to anyone except the crossburning protect the KKK and arrest anti-Klan He crunched another 50 feet into the fascists. While we do not advocate such protesters. Four were jailed on charges racist mob, injuring dozens of robed individual and impotent methods of ranging from "disturbing a lawful meeting" to felonious assault. The workers movement must demand that the charges against these anti-KKK PART 2 OF 2 militants be dropped. The fascists also reared their ugly heads over the July 4 weekend in the Chicago area. For several months, local • CODslitlltjOI' Nazis have targetted the largely Jewish Klansman posing at Plains, Ga. city Heroic Soviet Spies ....6 continued on page 4 line before the start of the rally on July 4 weekend. ~p-artacist Lea~ Holds Fifth Conference Forging a Black~Trot ist~Cadre

The Fifth National Conference of the is that it is common for poor black Spartacist League/U.S. was held early youth to regard pimping, pushing and committing violent crimes as a legiti­ this month in an East Coast city. mate way of life. and even as a form of Although only the elected delegates protest against white racist society. were mandated to attend, a total ofclose "Except for the incorrigible, hardened, to 300 comrades came to participate in anti-social criminals, we are not host tIe toward the lumpenized population. On this highest body of the SL/U.S. the contrary, to narrow the term Attending in addition to North Ameri­ 'lumpen' to these hardened criminal can comrades were seven representa­ types is to' deny the brutal effects of tives of European and Australasian racial oppression on a whole section of sections of the international Spartacist black youth who have no future in the economic process under capitalism. For tendency, as well as a delegation from them there is no escape from their the Los Ang~les-based Red Flag Union, grinding poverty under capitalism a group denved from the homosexual unless they turn to crime, and therefore left which is engaged in fusion discus­ they are forced to share many of the sions with the SL. Preceding the three­ values of hardened criminals. -We. on the other hand, must face this realitv day party conference was a national squarely if we are to be the best conference of the SL's youth group, the defenders of the rights of the black poor Spartacus Youth League (SYL). and the best fighters against conditions The survey of SL/SYL members which are wasting a whole generation of black youth. For example, when the present indicated that 30 percent had UA W bureaucracy sought to organize joined two years ago or less, while 59 vigilantism against street gangs in wv photo percent had been members for from Participants at recent Spartacist League national conference. Detroit, we resolutely opposed this three to six years. The largest number action, and also demanded an immedi­ ate end to Mayor Young's curfew (see was concentrated around the five-year 'Cops, Mayor Push "Anti-Crime" mark, testimony to the period of the _Midwest meeting as well as four ence, eight reporters were given present­ Hysteria in Detroit,' WV No. 127). extremely rapid recruitment out of the more recent internal bulletins produced ation and summary time. More than However, the struggle to forge a New Left milieu, including the antiwar, during the pre-Conference discussion sixty comrades spoke from the floor. communist-led black transitional or­ period. The lengthy and lively discussion ganization requires an implacable women's and black movements. Some struggle against lumpen activities and 39 percent were women; 41 percent were reflected the comrades' recognition of The Main Enemy Is at Home! a~titudes, particularly promiscuous union members. the importance of this question to the VIOlence. Every organization which has continuing transformation of the Spar­ Only IO percent were non-party SYL At the Conference, the main National seriously attempted to affect the tacist League into the nucleus of the ghetto-the Communist Party in the members. This figure, taken in conjunc­ Reports stressed the increasingly ag­ vanguard party. 1930's and '40's, the Black Muslims in tion with a substantial rise in the average gressive attacks on democratic rights their way and the Panthers at their That such a discussion was able to age of the SL/SYL since the 1974 con­ such as Supreme Court decisions best-has resolutely and ruthlessly take place at this Conference reflects the ference, indicates that the slight mem­ undermining previous democratic gains combated lumpen lifestylism.... organization's acquisition, for the first "...a communist following in the ghetto bership contraction noted previously in (abortion, school busing, etc.), as well as time since the rise of black nationalism (black transitional organization) WV reflects a certain tailing off of new the vicious anti-homosexual backlash in the late 1960's, ofa significant layer of cannot be built with petty thieves. It can recruitment by the youth organization spear~eadedbyAnita Bryant's reaction­ only be built through a ruthless struggle committed black members, some with reflecting the downturn in campus ary fundamentalist campaign. The against lumpen lifestylism and lumpen several years of experience in the party. values,' by an organized cadre with radicalism, while the party has contin­ reporters underscored the centrality of The priority accorded to this discussion authority among the black masses who ued to recruit professional revolution­ the slogan, "The Main Enemy Is at indicated not only a recognition of the are exemplars of communist morality." ary cadres out of the youth group. Thus Home," in opposition to the liberals and importance of the development ofblack The conference also endorsed the line the cohesiveness and maturity which New Leftist residues who refurbish U.S. Trotskyist cadre and leaders, but also of the article "Fear and Violence in helped make for a comfortable and imperialism's "democratic" pretensions the party's determination to concentrate NYC" (WV No. 147, 4 March 1977). productive conference reflect not only by seeking to associate their sectoralist . the deliberations of its highest body The SL's hostility to hustlerist attitudes, the revolutionary seriousness of the reform demands with Carter's funda­ around areas of unClarity and/or differ­ inimical to communist consciousness cadres but also the objective difficulties mentally anti-Soviet "human rights" ences within the organization. and disciplined functioning, contrasts confronting communist militants in the rhetoric. The prospects for substantial present period of strangulated labor sharply with the patronizingapproach of revolutionary regroupments were noted Lumpenism vs. Communist other avowedly leftist organizations, struggles. as quite bleak as the ostensibly revolu­ Morality Politically, the Conference was in most notably the Workers League and tionary organizations overwhelmingly International Socialists. Unlike these part a continuation of the work of the The original precipitant of the discus­ pursue a rightist course. fake-lefts, who orient toward transient Active Workers Conference held in the sion was a manifestation of some The international report and the recruitment offootloose minority-group Midwest some six months previously. softness on the part ofmany ofthe black fraternal greetings from the Trotzkis­ youth ona minimum programto provide Along with supplemental resolutions comrades toward modes of functioning tische Liga Deutschlands, Ligue Trots­ the appearance ofa "mass base," the SL prepared for the National Conference, kyste de France, Spartacist League of and attitudes characteristic ofa lumpen­ the Memorandum presented to the aims at the creation of a hardened cadre Australia and New Zealand and Trot­ proletarian existence. Beneath a debate of committed black Trotskyists who can Active Workers Conference constitu-ted over whether the term "Iumpen" refers skyist League of Canada testified to the become proletarian leaders. These com­ the main resolution defining the per­ only to hardened criminal elements or international Spartacist tendency's con­ rades must be prepared to lead white spectives and tasks of the organization tinuing consolidation as the program­ can be applied to a broader stratum of for the coming period. The documen­ workers as well as blacks, to lead within matically united Trotskyist alternative the chronically unemployed lay differ­ the party as well as among the masses. tary basis of the National Conference to the United Secretariat rotten bloc. ing estimations of the potential revolu­ included the written material preceding. The greetings from the Red Flag Union tionary role of lumpenized black ghetto delegation were grounds for continued youth. Toward a Black Transitional optimism about the prospect of a deep A document submitted to the pre­ Organization and principled fusion between these Conference discussion and adopted by WfJRNERI comrades and the SL. the Conference delegates explained: Unlike the classic Debsian approach that "Socialism has nothing special to One session of the conference agenda "Black criminals are drawn from a "NfiIJARIJ was devoted to commission meetings broad pool of poor ghetto youth, a offer the Negroes," the program of the under the auspices of the Trade Union social fact which conditions the latter's SL recognizes that the special oppres­ Marxist Working-Class Weekly Commission, financial department of activities and attitudes. If George sion of blacks under capitalism means of the Spartacist league of the U.S. Jackson's assertion that all black men that black workers will playa vanguard the Central Office and the legal defense over the age of 18 expect to go to prison commission. Virtually every other avail­ is an overstatement, it nonetheless role among the most militant fighters EDITOR: Jan Norden able time slot, including meal breaks, expresses a certain reality. Not many for socialist revolution. "Black and PRODUCTION MANAGER: Karen Allen was also utilized for additional commis­ black youth living on welfare become white unite and fight" can be realized CIRCULATION MANAGER: Anne Kelley sions, such as press, archives, RFU professional thieves, but a significant only on the basis of a militant, broad number have robbed stores at one time attack against capitalism, including a EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Brule. Charles fusion and Central Committee slate. or another. For most welfare does not Burroughs, George Foster, Liz Gordon, James The hyperconcentration ofimportant firm commitment to struggle against the Robertson, Joseph Seymour provide even a minimal standard of political work into a few agenda sessions living unless it is supplemented by some special oppression ofghettoized minori­ Published weekly. except bi-weekly in August was the result of a decision by the form of 'hustle.' Few ghetto youth will ties. Our perspective of revolutionary and December, by the Spartacist E'ublishing become pimps or pushers, but-as the integrationism means the mobilization Co., 260 Wesr Broadway, New York, N.Y. outgoing leadership to focus this Na­ popularity of black exploitation movies 10013. Telephone: 966-6841 (Editorial), tional Conference overwhelmingly on attests-many aspire to those roles of the union movement to fight for 925-5665 (Business). Address all correspond­ equality, e.g., the formation of black/ ence to: Box 1377, G.P.O., New York, N.Y. one subject: the black question. This which seem like an easy way out of 10001. Domestic subscriptions: $5.00 per year. discussion had been painstakingly pre­ poverty and social degradation. Similar labor defense of black schoolchildren Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y. social attitudes were common among against the segregationist anti-busing pared through the circulation ofroughly immigrant ethnic minorities before Opinions expressed in signed articles or a dozen written documents as well as WWII. AI Capone was a hero figure for backlash. The Debsian outlook at letters do not necessarily express the editorial substantial local discussions during the many second-generation Italian youth. bottom reflects the pressure ofthe"labor viewpoint. pre-Conference period. At the Confer- An important point for this discussion aristocracy," whereas the communist 15 JULY 1977 2 based upon a proletarian core-seeks to Vietnam). Muhammad Ali's famous become the "tribune of the people," the remark, 'the Viet Cong never did me any champion of all the oppressed. harm,' expressed the attitude of a large Solidarity with Strike in L.A. Port fraction of black draft-age youth. The special oppression of blacks "Blacks are naturally less prone to demands a struggle by the communist illusions about the democratic, class­ vanguard against "labor aristocratic" neutral character of the state apparatus. parochialism, chauvinist attitudes and Ghetto high school students hate cops in a way few white workers do.... backward consciousness institutional­ "As victims of racist oppression by a Bay Area Dockers: ized in the pro-capitalist labor bureauc­ white ruling class, black lumpens easily racy. And it demands special forms of accept some of the negative conditions organization as well, a black transition­ for communist consciousness. They are comparatively freer from chauvinist al organization under communist politi­ and bourgeois-democratic illusions in cal leadership. While insisting that only the American state than are white Don't Handle the working class organized at the point workers at the present time. of production has the social power to "However, lumpenized black youth effect revolutionary change, the party lack those positive elements of commu­ nist consciousness derived from partici­ involves itself in every significant social pation in the labor process and organ­ struggle, posing a class axis to lead Ized workers movement.... partial struggles in a revolutionary "...the black lumpenproletariat (like its Diverted Cargol direction. counterpart in other countries) is alienated from and potentially hostile to Our program toward the doubly the organized workin~ class, which it SAN FRANCISCO, July 9-ln re­ 34-president Herman's home local­ oppressed ghetto masses is not one of views as a socially privtleged group; this sponse to a walkout by the office suspended working rules to provide social welfare schemes, but rather of view is strengthened by the fact that the workers division of Los Angeles ships top trade-union leadership (though not exIra clerks to at least four ofthe struck working-class struggle against lumpeni­ the middle-level) is overwhelmingly clerk Local 63, the leadership of the shipping lines. The failure of Local 63 zation of the black population. Our white. Black lumpen hostility to the International Longshoremen's and leaders to even issue an appeal to perspective is counterposed to that of working class (black as well as white) Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) has boycott the scab cargo has facilitated the ghetto-oriented black radical can find a political expression. If black isolated the strike and ordered long­ the scabbing. groups, such as the Panthers, whose lumpens cannot be won to fascist bonapartism, they can be won to shoremen to scab on their own union by The treacherous leadership sabotage program centers around minimal de­ bourgeois liberal union-busting on a handling cargo diverted from L.A. to was exposed in the latest issue of mands for slightly improving the condi­ populist-leveling program. Sonny Car­ the San Francisco port. Thus the hand­ "Longshore Militant" (8 July), a class­ tions of the lumpenproletariat and son's actions on behalf of Lindsay in the picked successors to the recently retired struggle opposition paper published by defending them against victimizati()n. 1968 NYC teachers' strike and Baraka's Bridges/ Goldblatt regime­ Stan Gow and Howard Keylor, mem­ While struggles against racist frame­ on behalf of Gibson in the 1971 Newark teachers' strike conform to one of the International president Jimmy Herman bers of the S.F. longshore Local 10 ups and police brutality, around wel­ central elements of classic fascism-the and secretary-treasurer Curtis executive board. Gow and Keylor blew fare and rent and community health mobilization oflumpen violence against. McClain-have made clear their inten­ the whistle on the leadership's attempt care, are supportable, they are not the the workers movement in the name of tion to continue the most despicable main focus of our program, which aims plebeian-nationalist ideology. to bla'ck out news of the strike: "The political aspirations of the lum­ aspects of Harry Bridges' disastrous .....last Saturday when weekend B.A. at delumpenizing the lumpenproletariat penproletariat can express themselves policies of class collaboration. [business agent] Watkins was informed through jobs and educational opportu­ in forms other than fascism. Lumr.en Demanding a $2.01-an-hour wage that more than half the cargo aboard nities. Struggles for a shorterworkweek, radicalism can also take an ostensIbly increase over two years and resisting the the President McKinley was diverted, revolutionary form, posing as a left­ he ordered the men to work it! George for massive government public works at employers' demand to eliminate supple­ union wages, for free higher education wing alternative to Marxian proletarian Kekai, who had been informed of the socialism. In The ABCofCommunism, mental unemployment benefits, 98 strike by the Local 63 leadership, with stipend, for union-controlled Bukharin and Preobrazhensky' charac­ office workers, mostlv women, struck deliberately suppressed any news of It. training programs cannot be conducted terize anarchism, with its hostIlity to all five targeted terminals on Jul~ I. But Meanwhile, B.A. Herb Mills is claiming essentially from a ghetto base, but social authority and emphasis on the the ILWU tops began undermining the that he doesn't know of any agreement require the mobilization of the social leveling redistribution of consumption, between L.A. and S.F. not to handle as 'lumpenproletarian socialism' ...." walkout from the start. Pickets were diverted cargo. Yet Local 13 president power of the workers movement. pulled down and sent back to work at Almeida stated at our June 9 meeting Lumpenization is not only the most that there is such an agreement and "You Can't Lead a Party You one firm, Standard Food, because it vicious oppression to which blacks are deals in -perishable fruits! The ILWU Local 10 president Williams has been Don't Trust" bragging about it for months!" subjected. It constitutes also a real has also made no move to stop members danger to the future existence of black The deforming effects of lumpen of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Cle'rly the iongshore ranks must masses. Racism is so central to Ameri­ existence are far from solely ideological. Association (MEBA), who have been demand that their leadership live up to can political reaction that black The observation that "being determines crossing the picket lines with impunity the elementary solidarity agreement not lumpens-in contrast to the lumpenpro­ consciousness" is true not only in the since the second day of the strike. to handle scab cargo., letariat in ethnically homogeneous mass but among subjectively revolu­ To effectively back up the small office But recent events have made it clear societies-cannot become the shock tionary elements. The communist van­ workers division, the L.A. port should that the Local 10 leadership, including troops of an American fascist move­ guard, defined by its commonality of have been shut down tight. But the the Mills/Wing clique and Communist ment. But a black population which is of program, must exert its conscious will to leaders of San Pedro longshore Local Party supporters, are so committed to no economic use to the ruling class transform its lumpen-derived members 13, backed by the International, barred class peace that they consciously sabo­ stands doubly defenseless against a into disciplined Leninist cadres. Subjec­ a port-wide strike and agreed to allow tage all attempts at working-class unity. fascist onslaught. The only defense of tively revolutionary militants recruited all companies to be worked except those All wings of the bureaucracy lined up to these "wretched ofthe earth" resides in a out of a lumpen background must break directly involved in the dispute. help the employers' Pacific Maritime class-conscious proletariat. The union­ from a lumpen proletarian economic As the struck companies moved to Association (PMA) declare S.F. a "low ized black worker, who frequently has a existence and reject all vestiges of divert cargo to the Bay Area, the ILWU work opportunity port" (LWOP), there­ mother on welfare and a friend in lumpen lifestylism. Only on the basis of bureaucracy moved in tandem to by preparIng the way for forced trans­ prison, is the living bridge to and a rough equality between comrades-in undermine coast-wide unity and isolate fers and massive deregistrations of necessary leader of the ghetto masses. living standards, educational skills, the L.A. strike. San Francisco long­ longshoremen. PMA's attack on Local etc.-can a truly communist cadre be 63 is part of the shipping companies' Lumpen Radicalism shoremen have been ordered to handle forged, free from servility, patronizing the diverted cargo, and S.F. clerks Local continued on page 10 During the heyday of the New Left, and pretense. all shades of radical opinion tended to A break from lumpen existence view ghetto youth as the most politically requires a change in being and in advanced section of American society, consciousness. A disciplined black com­ as "natural revolutionaries." Derived munist cadre is forged by transcending a from that period of left-wing upsurge, a previous experience characterized by section of the SL membership, includ­ degradation and manipulation. The ing many of the black comrades. continued on paKe 10 has tended to carryover that attitude. The alienation of young blacks from aspects of capitalist ideology will be an important factor in their disproportion­ ate representation in any radical up­ Young surge. But spontaneous ghettoradical­ ism has sharp ideological limitations as Spartacus well as material ones. As another document submitted to the pre­ MONTHLY NEWSPAPER OF THE SPARTACUS YOUTH LEAGUE Conference discussion and adopted by the Conference delegates explained: "Many of the decisive ideological Make checks payabh/mail to: attitudes which bind white workers to Spartacus Youth Publishing Co., the American bourgeois order are Box 825, Canal Street Station, necessarily much weaker among blacks of all social classes. Great American New York, NY. 10013 chauvinism, closely identified with Name _ white AnglQ-Saxon supremacy, is certainly weaker in black ghettos than Address _ in white working-class suburb~. For obvious reasons, blacks are far more City _ disposed to sympathize with the State, Zip__-:-::::- struggles of colonial peoples a~ainst ~he 166 Western imperialist powers, mcludmg the U.S. This attitude can produce SUBSCRIBE NOW among blacks a broad-based tolerance for 'communism' when associated with $2/10 issues Striking office workers at American President Lines last week try to keep national liberation struggles (e.g. Cuba, engineer out of L.A. Terminal yard. ,3 15 JULY 1977 - Klan ... (continued from page 1) suburb of Skokie, whose population includes an estimated 7,000 survivors of Hitler's death camps. So far, local officials have been successful in staving off a threatened Nazi march by obtain­ ing successive court orders (which have been overturned on appeal). While this stopped the Hitler-lovers from staging a provocation on July 4 as they had - threatened to do, in the Southside area - of Marquette Park, a hotbed of racist agitation last year, a National Socialist - convention was held over the weekend. Fascists Rear Their Heads in the Land of "Human Rights" ~ - Despite the welcome fact that some of the recent fascist marches and rallies UFI were broken up, the Klan and Nazis Ohio Klan "Imperial Wizard" gets angry response during race-hate rally. have been surfacing across the country. While the Nazis peddle their savage backlash. A despicable Maoist tenden­ defenders of democratic rights. The The banners, which read "Pro - doctrine of "Aryan superiority" and - cy, the Revolutionary Communist Party marginal presence of JDLers at an Christo, Pro Patria" and showed a fist defend Hitler's death camps and ovens, (RCP), capitulates to racism among the earlier anti-Nazi Skokie ral1y did not smashing a hammer and sickle, were not the KKK fills the air with the stench of backward sections of the working class deter participation by the Spartacist the only outrage tolerated and protected burning crosses and "white power" and has become notorious for its Jim League/Spartacus Youth League in by the SWP that day. When the fascist rhetoric. Not only revolutionaries but Crow "socialist" opposition to busing. defense of the Jewish population and band of four grabbed the microphone - also trade unionists, blacks, Jews and all At the Columbus anti-Klan rally, the against the fascist provocation. But the and repeated the chant, "Abortion is = defenders of democratic rights must RCP-dominated "United Workers Or­ July 4 ral1y was little more than a murder," over and over, angry women fervently desire to see these fledgling ganization" carried a banner proclaim­ propaganda vehicle for the JDL, thus attempted to remove them. Again SWP fascist bands crushed completely, which ing: "We are Black and White Together excluding participation by marshals tried to protect the "free can only be accomplished through the Against the Busing Plan!" So while the revolutionaries. speech" of fascists against the outraged revolutionary mobilization of the work­ Klan calls for whites to oppose busing A smaller march the same day in feminists, who at last removed this - ing class. on the basis of "race purity," the RCP Skokie was dominated by the legalist/ raving provocateur from the mike. There is an ominous pattern to the takes the disgusting position of calling pacifist politics of the Communist Party recent emergence ofthe Klan and Nazis for "people's unity" in support of t~is (CP). The main thrust of the CP's on the streets of American cities with attack on the democratic rights of organizing was to cal1 on the govern­ Crush the Nazis and the Klan! their swastikas and hoods, cross burn­ blacks! But what else can one expect ment to ban fascist organizations. This Despite the increased visibility and ings and jackboots. Fascist terror gangs from the group which hailed anti-busing "ban the Klan" strategy not only creates have grown increasingly brazen in modest growth of the Nazis and the riots in Louisville as a "tremendous illusions in the capitalist state, it is also KKK, they remain isolated and despised Jimmy Carter's land of"human rights." fight back" which the Klan was trying to certain to backfire on the left, which is They are marching and rallying, open­ gangs on the lunatic fringe of the ultra­ "divide"? invariably a victim of political prohibi­ right. As such, they attract criminally ing up storefronts and seeking publicity tions of "extremist" organizations by for the first time in years. It is clear that insane sadists and a variety of socio­ - the bourgeois government. Moreover, paths. This has been underscored by the anti-Soviet "human rights" crusade Liberals, Reformists Push "Rights" for Fascists the Stalinists push this treacherous several recent atrocious murders. Last going hand-in-hand with a broad program in the name ofthe reactionary - reactionary offensive against racial February national attention was caught - As the Klan attempts to expand its campaign that has emboldened the - minorities, women, immigrants, homo­ by a grotesque killing spree by a lliIi-=:' fascists: Carter's anti-Soviet "human sexuals and workers has created a fetid terrorist organization it has found mentally defective gun fetishist and support from an assortment of liberals rights" crusade. A statement of the ­.!!!!!!!!!!! member of the National States Rights - political climate which spawns such and reformists who argue for "free Illinois CP "demanded from President Party who went on a ten-hour bloody fascist scum. speech" for fascists. Seeking to enlist the Carter" and his government, "the rampage in New Rochelle, New York, The Klan and Nazis have watched the - cops and courts more actively in their outlawing of racist and anti-semitic killing three black men and a dark­ Supreme Court, the president and .-=- cause, the KKK talks a lot these days organizations," concluding: "The right skinned Indian. In Chicago recently, Congress line up on their side ofsome of about being "law-abiding." In Plains, to be free from racist insult and violence their favorite issues: rolling back limited Sidney Cohen was killed by an avowed - Georgia, "Grand Dragon" David Pow­ is a human right!" (Daily World, 30 Nazi who forced him to ingest hydrogen - civil rights victories such as busing for ers said that "we try to do anything we June). cyanide, a poison used in Hitler's gas school desegregation, cutting off Medi­ --- can to get along with law enforcement." The Communist Party, however, at chambers. In searching the Nazi's home, - caid funds for poor women to receive In Chicago, the Nazis loudly announced least criticizes the ACLU for the latter's abortions, denying unemployment be­ police discovered anti-Semitic litera­ they would not march on Skokie on July efforts t() gain "free speech for fascists." nefits to striking workers and restoring ture, other poisonous chemicals and a 4 because the Illinois Supreme Court The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), in death list containing the names of - capital punishment. The Supreme contrast, makes this civil libertarian had not yet reversed its earlier verdict Cohen and two other Jews. Court, Anita Bryant's fundamentalist approach its hallmark. Whereas the - bigotry crusade and deadly "right-to­ upholding a city injunction on Nazi Vile as these crimes are, they do not rallies. But no one is fooled by these ACLU takes on court cases for the Klan - lifers" have joined hands with mission­ represent the real historical danger of stormtroopers and night riders-no and Nazis, the SWP takes its defense of ary zeal in a drive to "save the family" fascism. While they are today isolated, one, that is, except the civil libertarians fascists' "rights" directly into the left and from homosexuals, abortion and the fascists' growing aggressiveness and their reformist hangers-on. labor movement, and occasionally pornography. physically protects the Nazis from angry represents a real, if embryonic, danger The fascists feel that this increasingly Commenting on the Columbus rally, militants or provides a platform to to the labor movement and oppressed racial/ethnic minorities. Their present reactionary climate offers them a chance the executive director of the American "debate" the racist terrorists. growth is as the far-right wing of a to take center stage by basking in the Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) be­ Recently in D~troit, a July I pro­ general conservative-reactionary trend, - "respectability" conferred by govern­ moaned the fact that the cops didn't abortion rally called by the National - but their real flourishing will come when - ment backing oftheir causes. The KKK intervene soon enough to protect the Organization of Women (NOW) was - rally in Georgia was given a permit on KKK. "For me, this is a sad Fourth of the bourgeoisie can no longer rule by repeatedly disrupted by a local fascist - parliamentary means. Then a mass - the grounds that it was merely a July," he said. "I'm distressed that the group under the name of Break­ fascist movement will be fostered whose "patriotic display." When the Plains Klan did not get their First Amendment through. The SWP, whose reformism primary purpose will be to smash the -..... town council, uncomfortable over the rights" (Plain Dealer [Cleveland], 5 leads it to build NOW as the best - organized workers movement through ... national attention focused on "Carter­ July). From Camp Pendleton, Califor­ proponents of bourgeois feminism, mob violence. Therefore, it is necessary - ville," claimed it had been duped, nia to Far Rockaway, New York, the showed that it is also the left's best - to stamp these racist, anti-communist, "Imperial Wizard" Wilkinson pointed ACLU has become the active legal defender of fascists. When a handful of anti-labor terrorist bands into the out that the police knew perfectly well defenders of the Klan and the Nazis' Breakthrough supporters brought their ground now, when they are stil1 weak. - who he was. "right" to organize racist terror, whether banner into the middle ofthe rally, some The fascist groups which are begin­ In the north the Klan had sought, in the form of beatings of black of the infuriated feminists wanted to ning to raise their loathsome heads will largely unsuccessfully, to capitalize on Marines, burning of crosses or staging remove them, which could have been not be defeated by groups like the SWP the racist anti-busing mobilization provocative marches in a community of easily done except for the SWP marshals which preach "free speech" for genocid­ which gripped Boston in 1974-75, and victims of Hitler's holocaust. Fighting in who restrained them. managed to play a role in mounting the name of classless "democracy," the al terrorists while seeking to lure them into debates in order to "expose" them. segregationist demonstrations in Louis­ ACLU aids the fascists' attempts to TROTSKYIST LEAGUE FORUM ville. This year the KKK hopes to place obtain the protection of the state. Nor will liberal and Stalinist reformists itself at the head of anti-busing protests Of two anti-Nazi ral1ies held in Euro-Communism succeed in stopping fascism through the in Ohio. The Columbus rally was called Skokie on July 4, the largest was courts and state houses. And however under the slogans of "majority (white) organized and dominated by the Jewish Speaker: Ed Clarkson satisfying it may be to adventurists to Spartacist League fantasize about driving a sports car into - rule" and stopping "forced busing." Defense League (JDL). The virulently Central Committee - "Imperial Wizard" Reusch said, "I'm anti-communist JDL organizes around Place: U[liversity of Toronto a Klan rally, it is obvious that such - ready to fight. I'm ready to drive the its brand of right-wing Zionism while Hart House expressions of individual outrage can - enemy right offofthis land." And who is posing as the best defenders of the Debates Room solve nothing. Only the mobilization of --=- this enemy? "The groups who favor Jewish community against anti-Semitic Date: Saturday, July 23 the working class, particularly the -.... Time: 8:00 p.m . formation of disciplined labor defense busing. And there are a lot of commun­ attacks. Yet its paramilitary ethnic - ists involved" (Cleveland Press, 5 July). chauvinism and reactionary anti­ For more information call 416-366-4107 guards and a revolutionary struggle for state power, can crush the fascists in the ~ But the faSCists are not the only ones working-class politics seek to divide TORONTO ­ egg.• --=- trying to latch onto the anti-busing Jews from the best and most powerful 4 WORKERS VANGUARD -)IIJ!!!! !S- • For AMilitant L.A. County Workers Strikel

LOS ANGELES-Some 70,000 Los by crushing the city workers union; in corporations, especially those with Angeles County employees should have July ll-Militant workers from Detroit, where 10,000 municipal work­ notoriously low pay scales for clerical been on strike as of midnight, June 30. SEIU Local 535, representing 3,800 ers struck for one day last week to beat positions, like banks and insurance But when the contract coveringjob titles welfare eligibility workers of Los back Mayor Coleman Young's take­ companies. Even so, the SEIU reports ranging from clerks and welfare workers Angeles County, voted at a meeting away demands; and in Wisconsin, where that this year's survey showed that to nurses and engineers expired, union today by 373 to 177 to reject the' state employees are currently on strike. county workers were, on the average, "leaders" told the workers to stay on the county's offer and strike the next In Los Angeles these attacks have an earning seven percent less than those job as they greased the works for a day. However," using the pretext insidiously racist character, as dema­ surveyed. massive sellout to the hardlining county that only 10 percent ofthe member­ gogic politicians whip up support for ship was present at the meeting, the In addition to offering puny wage board of supervisors. their cutbacks among white taxpayers, increases, which as a result of inflation L.A. county workers are primarily bargaining committee highhanded­ irate over skyrocketing property tax Iy overruled the vote, unilaterally in fact amount to wage cuts, the county represented by the Service Employees rates and alarmed at the prospect of has been steadily whittling away atjobs. International Union (SEIU). A smaller declaring there would be no strike. busing for school integration, while The meeting, attended by several In 1974, a hiring freeze was instituted in number are covered by the American aiming their attacks at the predomi­ most departments. The freeze has meant Federation of State, County and thousand people, was marked by nantly black and Mexican-American repeated outbursts of anger from more wor" for fewer employees and has Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the county workforce as well as the ever­ hit particularly hard at eligibility work­ the floor against the Coalition of International Brotherhood of Electrical popular target of "welfare chiselers." ers, who deal with mushrooming wel­ County Unions and their no-win Workers (IBEW) and the California L.A. county management has learned fare rolls, swelled by continuing high policy. Although contracts expired Association of Professional Employees a thing or two from the San Francisco levels of unemployment. In many a week and a half ago, the bureau­ (CAPE). The workers are further board of supervisors, who have been on instances, departing employees are crats conspired to put a strike off divided by being broken up into 55 an anti-labor rampage, winning voter replaced by "temporaries" who have no until July 12 in order to wear down separate bargaining units. approval for anti-union initiatives and job security and few benefits. Despite and isolate pockets ofmilitancy like The unions had previously agreed crushing city workers strikes. They have the fact that more than 10,000 "tempor­ Local 535. Another militant sector, that all county workers would walk out also been heartened by Abe Beame and aries" have worked for years in this Local 660 (clerical workers), was if anyone bargaining unit failed to reach the New York City financier union­ second-class status, the unions have not prevented from voting until after a satisfactory agreement. But there is busters, who have administered blow even raised this issue in the negotiations. every indication that this bloc was tonight's midnight strike deadline. after blow to municipal labor with only The union leaderships' response to purely rhetorical. In line with SEW The bureaucrats' stalling tactics pathetic whimpers of protest from the county's escalating attacks is one of International president George Hardy's sparked demands that SEIU attor­ cowering union bureaucrats. The Los statement that, "The best strikes are ney Harry Gluck explain the delays. Angeles County administratorsfigure if retreat and rotten compromise. Thomas & those which never have to be called" He refused to do so and instead sent such campaigns can succeed in labor Co. are unwilling to lead a militant (Service Employee, May 1977), local a representative who was shouted strongholds like New York and San strike for a job-expanding shorter workweek with a big pay boost, an union leaders have already settled in down. With the bargaining commit­ Francisco, they should be a cinch in a most of the bargaining units on the most tee straining to control the seething -non-union town like L.A. unlimited cost-of-liviog escalator, full status for "temporaries," the right to pitiful terms. They are now trying to membership, they received some The board of supervisors' offensive strike over all grievances and an end to force a similar agreement down the timely aid from supposed radicals has the added encouragement of Cali­ all cutbacksin desperately needed social throats of clerical and welfare eligibility in the union, like Kathleen O'Nan, fornia governor Jerry Brown, best services. Fearful ofa confrontation with workers, who constitute the bulk of the who, at the height of the uproar known for his "limits of growth" the county, the union tops prefer to unionized workers and among whom rushed up to the podium to support preachings. Though the state budget docilely collect dues while the ranks strike sentiment is strongest. the leadership's position of no promises a $2.5 billion surplus this year, suffer scandalously inadequate and The terms agreed to in most of the strike. Brown recently cut legislature-approved deteriorating conditions. bargaining units are an outrageous As it became clear that the SEIU allocations for state employee salary insult to the workers: 5.25 percent wage tops were determined to frustrate increases and more than a quarter ofthe This tired bUSIness unionism increases with no cost-of-living protec­ every attempt by the 70,OOO-strong amount for the handicapped, despite progressively saps the strength of the tion, cuts in pensions and workmen's L.A. County workforce to strike in well-publicized sit-ins by disabled ben­ unions. Seeing bureaucrats manifestly compensation, provisions limitingauto­ defense of their job conditions and efit recipients in his Sacramento office. unwilling to lead a fight, only a third of matic "step" pay increases and tying living standards, the meeting dis­ The current contract negotiations the county workers have joined the them to arbitrary management evalua­ solved into chaos as droves of also take place in the midst of a unions, even though they gained collec­ tions of "merit," and a two-year rather workers stalked out in disgust. campaign to repeal the "prevailing wage tive bargaining rights in 1970. In most than a one-year contract. In addition to clause" in the L.A. county charter, departments, there are onlya handful of appointed shop stewards. In many these obvious setbacks, the contract ing arbitration is formalized as the another weapon borrowed from San areas, even higher union officers are says nothing about the workers' job "solution" to all grievances. The terms Francisco's arsenal. This provision appointed rather than elected. security, the hiring freeze imposed in are so favorable to the county that requires that the county pay wages "at In a desire to boost their dues base 1974 or ever-mounting speedup. Bind- board of supervisors member James least equal" to those of private industry while avoiding militant organizing Hays boasts that the agreement "will be for similar job classifications. Los campaigns, the bureaucrats have resort­ the best [lowest] settlement of any Angeles County regularly undercuts the continued on page 10 SPARTACIST LEAGUE ""'" governmental unit-state or federal­ clause bv snrveying non-union private LOCAL DIRECTORY this year." ANN ARBOR Meeting in all-night session June 30, clo SYL, Room 4316 FORUM------~ Michigan Union, U. of Michigan the clerical (SEW Local 660) and Ann Arbor, MI 48109 eligibility workers (SEW Local 535) BERKELEYI OAKLAND (415) 835-1535 bargaining teams rejected manage­ Box 23372 ment's final offer, which approximated Oakland, CA 94623 STOP ANITA BRYANTI these terms. But rather than immediate­ BOSTON (617) 492-3928 Box 188 ly calling the workers out on strike, the M.I.T. Station union leaders set a July 12 strike Cambridge, MA 02139 CHiCAGO (312) 427-0003 deadline, arguing. the effectiveness of Dade County- Box 6441, Main P.O. waiting until after payday, July II. But Chicago, IL 60680 this sham excuse was quickly exposed A Revolutionary CLEVELAND...... (216) 281-4781 Box 6765 when the union set a membership vote Cleveland, OH 44101 on management's last offer for 5 p.m., Trotskyist Analysis DETROIT (313) 869-1551 July 12, even though the strike is Box 663A. General P.O .\ Detroit, MI 48232 scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. that Jointly sponsored by: HOUSTON same day! The labor skates of the Box 26474 Houston, TX 77207 Coalition of County Unions, headed by RED FLAG UNION LOS ANGELES (213)662-1564 Local 660 president Jack Thomas, hope (Bolshevik Tendency) Box 26282, Edendale Station that they can use the additional time to Los Angeles, CA 90026 -Formerly the Lavender wear down all resistance to the rotten MADISON and Red Union clo SYL, Box 3334 agreement. Madison. WI 53704 NEW yORK ,, (212) 925-2426 Management Offensive and Box 1377. G.P.O. New York, NY 10001 By their cowardly behavior, the union SPARTACIST LEAGUE PHILADELPHIA tops are only fueling the anti-labor P.O. Box 13138 Philadelphia, PA 19101 appetites of the county supervisors. Like SAN DIEGO their cohorts around the country, the PO Box 2034 July 16, 7:30 p.m. Chula Vista. CA 92012 supervisors seek to resolve their budget woes by slashing the wages and condi­ Peoples College of Law SAN FRANCiSCO...... (415) 564-2845 2228 West 7th Street Box 5712 tions of public employees and decimat­ San Francisco, CA 94101 ing the already minimal services pro­ TROTSKYIST LEAGUE vided to the working people, poor and Los Angeles OF CANADA heavily black and Latin ghetto Childcare provided TORONTO (416) 366-4107 populations. Box 7198, Station A For more information call: Similar attacks have provoked recent Toronto, Ontario 466-7458 or 662-1564 VANCOUVER...... (604) 291-8993 strikes in Atlanta, where Mavor May­ Box 26. Station A nard Jackson exploded the myth of Vancouver, B.C. Donation $1 "progressive" black capitalist politicians

15 JULY 1977 5 Heroic Soviet Spies

As the Red Orchestra was being cooperation of highly placed elements in CitadeL" whose aim was to take Kursk, transfer large units from the Far East to hounded by the Sonderkommando, the German bourgeoisie, just as in the was reported on by "Lucy" in great be thrown into the battle of Stalingrad. other Soviet networks assumed corre­ case of the Harnack/Schulze-Boysen detail. When it was finally launched The operations of this truly brilliant spondingly greater importance. The group in Berlin. The Swiss network's after much delay in July 1943, the Red "masterspy" were so effective that the most significant of these was the Swiss most important coup was its connection Army already had a precisely worked German embassy and foreign office network which the Gestapo referred to with Rudolf Rossler (codenamed out counterplan: vehemently protested his arrest in 1941, as the "Red Troika" for its three "Lucy"), formerly a left-liberal German '" n the spring of 1943 we got hold of-­ and continued to pressure Japanese transmitters. Soviet intelligence had theater critic who fled to Switzerland thanks to the brilliant work ofSoviet in­ authorities on his behalf for months. telligence--a quantity of important maintained an independent operation in after the Nazis came to power. He joined data about the grouping of German even after receiving his confession! Switzerland since the late 1930's, but its Swiss intelligence and developed a web troops preparatory to the summer Sorge was a man of great daring and vital work took place in 1942-43 as of informants in the Wehrmacht and offensive....· On the basis of these intelligence. Arriving in Japan with Trepper's Belgian and French groups Luftwaffe commands and the foreign conclusions we worked out our plan for impeccable credentials as a correspond­ were smashed. In December 1942 office, while feeding his information to the battle of Kursk.... First the Soviet ent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, he had troops wore down the enemy in defen­ German counterintelligence learned the USSR via Rado. To this day the sive engagements; then. switching to the taken the somewhat dangerous precau­ from an arrested member of the Red exact sources of "Lucy's" information offensive. they smashed the enemy army tion of joining the Nazi Party (luckily Orchestra the code ofthe Swiss network are unknown. groups in pieces." his police record, revealing a host of and the scope of its information. But As massive battles raged on the Don -Grigory Zhukov, Memoirs and clandestine activities for the German because ofSwiss neutrality it was unable and Volga steppes from July 1942 to Reflections Communist Party in the early 1920's, to wipe out the group directly, only February 1943. Moscow was receiving a While the German army fell back was not thoroughly checked until after managing to cripple it in 1944. steady stream of data from the Swiss before the Soviet offensive, the Gestapo his arrest). His service record in World Under the cover of the "Geopress network on the strategy and state of the intensified pressuie against Rado, who War I (he received an Iron Cross) and Map Publishing Company," Sandor German forces. "Lucy" told the center was forced into hiding. His second in reputation as an expert on Japanese that the Wehrmacht's flank was unpro­ command, Alexander Foote, was raided affairs (partly due to reports from his tected on the "Black Fields" southeast of by the Swiss police during a transmis­ extensive espionage network) recom­ A review of: The Great Game, by Stalingrad and it expected no attack sion--as they broke in the door he mended him to the German official managed to smash the radio with a Leopold Trepper; The Red from this quarter. That was then chosen community. He became particularly as the very area from which the Red hammer, while burning telegrams with a close with Major-General Eugen Ott. Orchestra, by Gilles Perrault; Army launched its November 1942 candle's flame. But with the Nazis now who was eventually appointed ambas­ Our Own People, by Elisabeth counteroffensive. Marshal Zhukov cites clearly losing the war and due to Swi~s sador. Sorge was given a room at the the former German chief of operational neutrality. the fate of the members ofthe embassy and trusted with highly confi­ Poretsky; Codename Dora: Me­ staff. General JodI. as saying: "We had "Red Troika" was not the same as those dential information, on which his moirs oj a Russian Spy, by no idea of the strength of the Russian of the Orchestra. Foote and others were opinion was often sought. Sandor Rado. troops in this r"gion. Previously there eventually released and Rado made it Sorge's reputation was that of a highly respected, if somewhat eccentric, member of the diplomatic community. His sociability and occasionally ob­ streperous behavior were seen as the attributes of a typical Berliner: shrewd. uproarious. fond of drink and women. PART20F2 He was quoted as commenting admir­ ingly on the famous Japanese 17th cen­ tury rebellion of the 47 ronin (unem­ Rado, a Hungarian communist who had ployed samurai), who killed their lord's been trained as a cartographer, had murderer after putting him off guard. established the network for the Fourth "They knew how to cover up their aims Department. Rado had served as a with drinking and restless wandering," political commissar in the army of Bela commented Sorge. perhaps reflecting Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic at the on his own habit of roaring around age of 19. His wife, Helen Jansen, had Tokyo on a motorcycle after nights of taken part in the 1919 Spartacus heavy drinking. Even his Japanese uprising in Berlin, providing fire cover mistress was totally in the dark about his for her comrades as they left the espionage activities. The self-assurance Communist Party headquarters, and The Lubianka, headquarters of the GPU. with which he was able to play out his later fought with the Red Army in role was no doubt partly a result of putting down the Kronstadt mutiny. In had been no troops at all there, and then safely to France (where he learned that Berzin's insistence that a "cover" must 1935 Rado was approached by the suddenly they attacked in such strength his entire family had perished in the be as little artificial as possible-that is Fourth Department and began his that they made a decisive difference." death camp of Auschwitz). why the head of the Fourth Department career as an officer in the Soviet Soviet troops finally broke through Richard Sorge insisted on Sorge using his own name. intelligence service. the German positions in the north in Sorge's one recorded moment ofdeep Rado's memoirs (Codename Dora: January 1943, 'relieving Leningrad One of the strengths of the Red depression came when the Germans Memoirs of a Russian Spy, London: which had been besieged for 18 months. Orchestra was the fact that its key invaded the USSR. According to his Abelard. 1977) detail the work of the The Wehrmacht, put on the defensive components were dedicated revolution­ mistress. he spent the day crying and "Red Troika" in providing the Red for the first time on the eastern front, ary militants with long common person­ answered her concerned questions with Army with information which proved began construction of the "Ostwall," a al ties and work. This gave the members the reply, "I am lonely. I have no real crucial in the battles of Stalingrad and line of strong fortifications in the Baltic a sense of each other's style. extremely friends." It is not hard to imagine his Kursk, the turning points of the war on states. However, the "Red Troika" valuable in clandestine conditions fury at Stalin's refusal to use the vital the eastern front. The book points out managed to obtain and transmit plans where maintaining contact was the first information his Japanese network had that the Troika's information was of of this defensive line. Hitler's last and most difficult task, but it was also a been supplying the center for months such high quality because it obtained the offensive against the USSR. "Operation weakness. Once the first arrests were about preparations for the attack. He made. because of their intimate rela­ also provided an in-depth analysis tions (i.e., the lack of rigid compartmen­ about the February 1936 insurrection of talization) some of those who broke young Japanese army officers, reports under torture-an inevitable occur­ of the German-Japanese negotiations rence--knew too much and opened the around the formation of the "Anti­ whole network to exposure. This failing Comintern Pact," extensive informa­ was even more pronounced in the tion on the Japanese invasion of China. ,-'.-,- .' '.'-' Orchestra's vital Berlin group where and in the last months before his arrest Ae;n:o no 06.&Il11BlfIUt 1PWnEPA JeouoJU>Jta3axa­ there was a total confusion offunctions. reports that Japan would attack the pO.!l~qa" nep~eVO'1'pell:O Bve!lllo,lt KoueNleJ .Bepxonoro In this respect the "Red Troika" was a United States in December 1941. or in ella cctp 2& 1181'1 -UI:;4 1'OA8. more professional espionage apparatus any case no later than January 1942. - UOCl't,HOllJlellIUl' O"o~o!'o COx.e~HKil' O'l' :re Qna­ and also more successful in with­ Sorge admitted his spy acti\ities. hoping pa 1947 rona K'9 r.sBspa :952 1'O~a 11 01fic~eauw standing the enemy's pressure. But the that the Soviet government would come TPEJT.nEPA.A,3. 01'lJ\~nelt!l • AtlJlO sa oTcyrC1'fllleW most effective Soviet spy operation of to his rescue: his hopes were dashed and coc-rinul. u"e:n:tnJlCIWl'l npel(pa~eHo. '» - .' ',' "-:---"--:"", the World War II period was that he \\as finall\ executed in Nowmhcr headed by Richard Sorge in Japan. 1944. which operated from 1934 to 1941. Ignace Reiss Sorge's brilliant analyses and carefully cultivated circle of friends at the highest Like Trepper. Rado and Sorge. levels of the German embassy and Ignace Reiss had been a communist Japanese government not only pro­ militant hefore joining the Soviet d uced precisely accurate information intelligence apparatus. But although he about "Operation Barbarossa," but also worked for a longer period in the led to the conclusion that Japan would various espionage services, he alone had Soviet court document Issued In 1955 reversing 1M7 8nd 1952 decisions not attack the USSR in 1942-a vital the courage and political vision to break 8g81nst Trepper "for 8bsence of b8.lc elements of crime," factor permitting the Red Army to with Stalin while remaining true to his 6 WORKERS VANGUARD whom we called 'theirs'-people Mos­ faction"), there was also a left wing (the cow entrusted with tasks their Europe­ "Reiss faction") that would break from an Communist agents, most of them the bureaucracy under the impact of recruited from the Fourth, would never have performed. These were the people tremendous social struggles. in the NKVD whom Moscow relied on "If tomorrow the bourgeois-fascist for burglaries, kidnappings, and mur­ grouping, the 'faction of Butenko,' so to ders. ... But the particular reason speak, should attempt the conquest of everyone avoided Lisa Zarubin was power, the 'faction of Reiss' inevitably because of the role she had played in the would aiign itself on the opposite side of betrayal and eventual death of Jacob the barricades. Although it would find Blumkin."' itself temporarily the ally of Stalin, it Blumkin had been a young Social would nevertheless defend not the Bonapartist clique but the social base of Revolutionary implicated in the assassi­ the USSR, i.e., the property wrenched nation of German ambassador Count away from the capitalists and trans­ Mirbach in 1918, who later joined the formed into state property." Communist Party and GPU. On one of At the time of Reiss's assassination, his trips he had visited Trotsky at Trotsky projected the existence of a Prinkipo, no doubt out of sentimental "Reiss faction" essentially on theoretical impulse. Zarubin was assigned to lure grounds. This understanding armed the him back to Moscow, playing on a Trotskyists, so that when the workers former love affair. He was shot upon his rose up against the bureaucratic rule­ return. as in Hungary in 1956 and Poland in But despite Reiss's return to western 1970-it was no surprise that large Europe, there was no escape from sections of the state apparatus and the Stalinist betrayal. The first Moscow Communist Party simply disintegrated, Trial of August 1936-where Zinoviev, with many going over to the workers' Kamenev, I. N. Smirnov, Mrachkovsky cause, including highly placed state and 12 other defendents were sentenced officials (e.g., Colonel Pal Maleter in to death and shot-forced Reiss to face Hungary). political reality. He and Krivitsky, Beyond providing an understanding another of the top NKVO residents in of the Soviet World War II intelligence Europe, met repeatedly for agonized operations, perhaps the chief virtue of private discussions. Krivitsky equivo­ the books here being reviewed is the cated, alternating between despair and revelation of the actual existence of a Ignace Reiss hope, and several times talked Reiss out "Reiss faction" and vivid portrayals of of an open break. His main argument its private life. The very existence of Leninist convictions. After 18 months in aside from technical difficulties was the such a layer, at the very heart of the Pilsudski's prisons for his militarv hope that the Spanish revolution would Soviet state apparatus, not only refutes bourgeois rantings about Stalinism information gathering in 1920. he mad~ triumph and break Stalin's stranglehold being the necessary result ofLeninism. It his way to Germany where he participat­ over what had become the "Stalintern." also sharply contradicts social­ ed in military preparations for the Reiss considered his work during this democratic claims that the USSR is abortive 1923 uprising. Following that period, supplying arms to Republican "state capitalist." For in no capitalist failure he spent several years in Vienna. Spain from private and governmental society does it occur that a whole layer of Prague and Amsterdam. returning to sources in Europe, a vital task. But by the state apparatus is prepared togo over Moscow in 1927 to receive the Order of 1937 it had become obvious that Stalin to the workers' side. The existence of a the Red Hanner for his work. also viewed a revolutionary victory in Spain as a threat. Reiss determined then "Reiss faction" of the bureaucracy, In 1929. as the Stalinist bureaucracy to refuse to return to Moscow and to located as well in the military and was continuing to consolidate its hold o~ disobey orders to spy on anti-Stalinist intelligence apparatus. is a result of the the Soviet state apparatus. Berzin. leftists in Spain. InJuly 1937 hewrote his essentially "conservative" (in a positive sensing that despite his credentials as an letter to the Central Committee of the sense) nature of those organs ... and of Old Bolshevik his own position was CPSU denouncing Stalin and openly the fact that there is still somethingofthe threatened, began to shift some of his allying himself with the Fourth Interna­ conquests of the OctoberRevolutionleft trusted associates out of the line of fire. tional (see box in this issue). to preserve. Reiss. for example. spent the next three While he sent off his letter, returning years in the archives section of the with it his Order of the Red Banner, Soviet Spies in Stalin's Prisons Fourth Department. During this time. Reiss refused to make his break public he could not help but notice the degener­ With the end of World War II, the until he felt he had a secure hiding place. survivors among .these revolutionary­ ation ofthe revolution and the straitjack­ But it was not possible to hide from eting of the party and Soviet society. Simon and Schuster militants-turned-Soviet-spies, their job As Soviet intelligence officer, Kim Stalin's assassins-it would have been accomplished, wanted to come in from When Berzin suggested he consider far better, as Trotsky wrote later, to seek taking a Comintern assignment, Reiss Philby worked inside Britain's Sec­ the cold. Even in "peacetime" they were ret Intelligence Service. maximum publicity so as to make it too hunted men: Rado had been forced to responded to his wife's reminder that he costly for the NKVO gangsters to had always wanted to return to party escape from neutral Switzerland and assassinate him. For this error Reiss enter "liberated" France clandestinely; work: "What party work? What party? paid with his life, and his bloody corpse There are no parties any more, there is Trepper, in turn, was still hiding from was discovered beside a country road French gangsters who had collaborated not even a Comintern." In Our Own near Lausanne, Switzerland in Septem­ People, Elisabeth Poretsky, Reiss's with the Gestapo. Finally, in January ber. During the following months his 1945 both men climbed aboard a Soviet widow, described those grim years from friends in Moscow disappeared one by 1929 to 1932, when friends began to military plane headed for Moscow. one. Krivitsky finally bolted to the West, With them was ShlyapQ.ikov, theformer disappear. stories of arrests and execu­ but became linked up with anti­ tions came closer and closer to home and leader of the Workers Opposition, who Communist circles· and died in a had left the USSR (with Lenin's aid) in Reiss and his circle sought to escapefrom Washington. D.C. hotel room. the vicious corruption of everything the early 1920's and was now returning Bolshevism had stood for. Explaining voluntarily on the basis of a warm why her husband refused to work for the The "Reiss Faction" invitation from Molotov. Comintern, Poretsky explained: While Shlyapnikov ~as filled with naive enthusiasm, Rido well knew what "He knew it would mean involvement in In his courageous break from the was in store and managed to escape the inner party struggles that were then bureaucracy, Reiss stands out as an tearing the international Communist during a stopover in Egypt. Trepper movement apart. Ludwik [Reiss's pro­ exception to those like Trepper who tried to evade the essential political admits: fes~ional name] was not a Trotskyite, on "While we were flying toward Moscow, many points he disagreed with Trotsky, question of Stalinism. As Stalin's Rado's disappearance obsessed me. I but like all old party members he could sabotage of Soviet defense which made knew he had performed his mission not conceive of a Communist move­ possible the initial successes of the beyond all expectations, that he had ment without Trotsky ... since the vi­ nothing to reproach himself for. ... But cious anti-Trotsky campaign, which German invasion in June 1941 so graphically underlined, the real defense precisely because of his profound had continued after his expulsion from understanding of the facts, his r~alism the party and the country, Ludwik of the Soviet Union was a relentless as a man of learning, he felt that in spite would no longer feel at home either in struggle to oust the parasitic clique of the victory, nothing had changed in the Soviet Union or in the party." which had usurped power. But in his the kingdom of the OGPU .... dilemma, his inner struggle, Reiss was ''The truth Rado perceived did nol Eventually Reiss decided to join the strike me with its blinding truth until NKVD's foreign department, the INO, symptomatic of a broader layer. Trot­ later. I was too naive. I believed that since it appeared to be the only way to sky wrote, "We may assume with now that the fighting was over, the leave the USSR and stay out ofthe party certainty that in the ranks of the terror would cease, and the regime purges. It was not an easy decision, for bureaucracy there are quite a number would evolve." he not only shared the disdain of the who feel as Reiss did. They have The "Big Chief," who had outwitted the Fourth Department for the crude contempt for their milieu. They hate combined resources of the Third Reich, methods and personnel of the NKVD, Stalin. And, at the same time, they walked into a trap. Instead of relatives, but also the fear and hatred widespread endlessly toil on and on" ("A Tragic friends and former associates on hand to among veteran communists toward this Lesson," September 1937). greet him in Moscow there were only bastion of Stalinist terror. The attitude In the Transitional Program, Trotsky officials of the NKVO. When it became of Reiss's circle was revealed by his Harper and Row generalized this further, noting that in clear that Shlyapnikov had been arrest­ wife's comments on one of the NKVO Richard Sorge headed Red Army addition to a right-wing, ultimately ed, Trepper was filled with disgust at the counterrevolutionary and fascist wing thugs: intelligence in Japan. continued on page lJ "Lisa Zarubin was another of those of the bureaucracy (the "Butenko 1 15 JULY 1977 returning Communist veterans of the were not officially at war until 1945), the specialized in anti-Semitic pogroms. His Soviet Spies ... Spanish civil war, who were jailed and general replied that the Japanese gov­ patriotism fired by the Russian victory shot because they knew too much and ernment had proposed this on three in World War II, Szulgin returned from (continued from page 7) might have been infected with anti­ occasions to the Soviet embassy in Yugoslavia praising Stalin and lament­ shabby trick played on the Old Bolshe­ Stalinist ideas. This was a mopping-up Tokyo. Each time it was told that the ing only that the "general secretary" vik trade unionist: "He had been operation of the Great Purge. prisoner was "unknown to us." Trep­ wasn't a real tsar. Szulgin was released expecting Molotov's car; instead, he was Any possible doubts as to the reason per's outraged comment in his memoirs well before the surviving communist met by a police car, which drove him for his imprisonment were removed was: militants. straight to Lubianka." during a brief interview with General "Unknown, Richard Sorge? When the Most remarkable of all, during the The "Big Chief' told his NKVD Abakumov, Stalin's minister of securi­ Japanese papers were full of stories time Trepper was held at Lubianka, about his contacts with the soviet "colleagues" that he wished to return to ty. Attacked for the large number of military attache'? Unknown, the man Heinz Pannwitz, a top SS leader and Poland, but only after talking with the Jews in the Red Orchestra, Trepper who had warned Russia of the German head of the Sonderkommando Rote directors about the terrible mistakes proudly replied that there were fighters attack. and who had announced in the Kapelle was held in a nearby cell. made by the center which led to the from 13 nationalities in the network and middle of the battle of Moscow that Pannwitz had continued the Funkspiel the onlycriterion for' selection was "the Japan would not attack the Soviet ["radio game"] after Trepper's escape demise of the Red Orchestra. These Union. thus enabling the Soviet fhiefs certainly warranted a thorough review: desire to fight Nazism to the end." of staff to bring fresh divisions from and finally surrendered to the Russians the Belgian group had fallen because Abakumov did not reply, but instead Siberia? They preferred to let Richard as Allied troops tightened their nets. Moscow insisted on broadcasts of five went to the heart of the subject. "You Sorge be executed rather than have Even though Pannwitz was the "butcher to six hours a day, allowing the see." he said, "there are only two ways to another troublesome witness on their of Prague," responsible for the massacre hands after the war. Sonderkommando plenty of time to thank an agent in the Intelligence "The decision had not come from the of thousands ofinnocent Czechs follow­ locate the transmitter with its tracking Service: either cover his chest with Soviet Embassy in Tokyo, but directly ing the 1942 assassination of Heydrich; vehicles; and the key HarnackjSchulze­ medals, or cut offhis head. Ifyou hadn't from Moscow. Richard Sorge paid for even though his version of the Great Boysen network was smashed as a result worked with that gang of counterrevo­ his intimacy with General Berzin. After Game was exploded by Trepper's lutionaries~Tukhachevski, Berzin, and Berzin was eliminated, Sorge, in the reports; and despite Pannwitz' system­ of a telegram from Moscow to Kent eyes of Moscow, was nothing but a containing the names and addresses of so on-you would be a man laden with double agent. and a Trotskyite in the atic murder of the captured Red the three main leaders of the Berlin honors today; but you went about it in bargain! For months his dispatches Orchestra members, in order to cover group! But Trepperwas never allowed to such a way that you're good for nothing were not decoded. until the Center his tracks by eliminating witnesses to his make his indictment before the directors. but a prison cell." Jail, Abakumov finally realized the inestimable military barbaric activities as head of the value of the information he had pro­ Instead, he was sent to Lubianka for claimed cynically, was a protection vided. After his arrest in Japan, the Sonderkommando, this important Nazi being "so interested in the past." There against the imperialist secret services directors at the Center abandoned him war criminal was freed in 1955 as a result Trepper was subjected to grueling which would try to seize the head of the like a cumbersome piece of luggage; of an agreement signed with West interrogation, threats against himself Red Orchestra. such was the policy of the new team. German chancellor Adenauer. At the Trepper spent almost ten years in "Moscow allowed the 'unknown' Rich­ and his family (which knew nothing of ard Sorge to be executed on November time The Great Game was written Pann­ his whereabouts) and endless demands Stalin's prisons. There he met Klausen, 7, 1944. Since then, Moscow has witz was managing director of a bank in that he confess his "crimes against the Richard Sorge's radio operator, who proclaimed, proudly, the history of Ludwigsburg, West Germany, and Soviet Union." It was not even because after long years in Japanese prisons was Sorge's work. I am particularly happy receiving a state pension for his SS he could prove how Stalin nearly arrested immediately after returning to to expose this imposture today, and to service! make this accusation before the world: wrecked the USSR's defenses that he the Soviet Union. He also encountered a Richard Sorge was one of us. Those was being held, but because he had been Japanese general, captured in Manchu­ who allowed him to be murdered have The Next Generation part of Berzin's Fourth Department and ria, who had been vice-minister of no ril!ht to claim him as theirs." had escaped the purges by being abroad. defense at the time Sorge was arrested. Also during his time in prison, "It's too bad you left the USSR. If Trepper and his associates were threat­ To the obvious question of why Sorge Trepper met Szulgin, the head of the you'd stayed, you would have been ened with the same fate which met was not exchanged (Japan and Russia Black Hundreds, tsarist gangs who had taken care of long since," one of his

the Muralovs, the Drobnis, Serebriakovs, Mdivanis, and Okudzhavas, IGNACE REISS: Rakovskys, and Andreas Nins5-'the spies and enemy agents, the saboteurs and Gestapo agents'! The working class must defeat Stalin and Stalinism so that the U.S.S.R. and the international workers' movement do not succumb to "Free Humanity of fascism and counter-revolution. This mixture of the worst of opportunism, devoid of principles, and of lies and blood threatens to poison the world and the last forces of the working class. What is needed today is a fight without mercy against Stalinism! The Capitalism and the class struggle and not the popular front, workers' intervention in the Spanish revolution as opposed to the action of committees. Down with the lie of socialism in one country! Return to Lenin's USSR of Stalinism!" international! Neither the Second nor the Third International can carry out this -from Elisabeth Poretsky, Our Own PeaRle (Am, Arbor, 1970) historical mission. Corrupt and dislocated, all they can do is to prevent the working class from fighting. They can only be the policemen at the I should have written the letter I am writing you today a long time service of the bourgeoisie. The irony of history! In the past the bourgeoisie provided its own Cavaignacs and Gallifets, its Trepovs ago, on that day when the Sixteen' Were massacred in the cellars of the 6 Lubianka on the orders of the 'Father of the People.' and Wrangels . Today, under the glorious leadership of the two I kept quiet then and I did not raise my voice at the murders that Internationals. it is the proletarians themselves who have become the followed, and as a result I bear a heavy responsibility. My guilt is grave, executioners of their comrades. The bourgeoisie can attend quietly to its own business: order and peace rule. There are still Noskes and but I will try to repair it, to repair it promptly and thus ease my 7 8 Yezhovs, Negrins and Diazs . Stalin is their leader and Feuchtwanger conscience. Up to this moment I marched alongside you. Now I will not take their Homer. No. I cannot stand it any longer. I take my freedom of action. I return another step. Our paths diverge! He who now keeps quiet becomes to Lenin, to his doctrine, to his acts. Stalin's accomplice, betrays the working class, betrays socialism. I intend to devote my feeble forces to the cause of .Lenin. I want to I have been fighting for socialism since my twentieth year. Now on continue the light, for only our victory-that of tne proletarian revolu­ the threshold of my fortieth I do not want to live off the favours of a tion-will free humanity of capitalism and the U.S.S.R. of Stalinism. Yezhov. 2 I have sixteen years of illegal work behind me. That is not Forward to new struggles! For the Fourth International! little, but I have enough strength left to begin all over again. For it will indeed be necessary to begin everything all over again to save Ludwik socialism. That fight began a long time ago and I want to take my part in 17 July 1937 it. P.S. In 1928 I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for services to The noise that is made about the deeds of pilots flying over the Pole the proletarian revolution. I am enclosing the decoration. It would be is supposed to drown out the moans and the cries of the victims beneath my dignity to wear an order also worn by the executioners of tortured in the cellars of the Lubianka, in Svobodnaia, in Minsk, in Kiev, the best men of the working class in Russia. (In the last two weeks in Leningrad, in Tiflis. It will not succeed. The voice of truth is stronger Izvestiia has pUblished the names of those who have received the than the noise of the most powerful engines. award. Their achievements have been discreetly kept quiet: they are It is quite true that the records of the pilots will affect the hearts of the men who have carried out the death sentences on the old American ladies and of the youth of two continents intoxicated by Bolsheviks.) sports, much more easily than we will succeed .in conquering international opinion and affecting the conscience of the world. But make no mistake, truth will find a way and the day of judgement is 1. The 16 Old Bolsheviks tried in Moscow in August 1936 and subsequently executed. much nearer than those in the Kremlin think. The day when 2. Nikolai I. Yezhov, appointed head of the NKVD by Stalin in 1936 to carry out the first wave of purges, then purged himself in 1938 and shot. international socialism will jUdge the crimes committed in the past ten 3. The American press correspondent Roy Howard, who interviewed Stalin in 1935 years is not far off. Nothing will be forgotten and nothing will be 4. Pierre Laval was the French foreign minister who negotiated the Franco-Soviet Pact of 1935 and later served as head of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in World War II. forgiven. History is harsh. 'The leader of genius,' 'the Father of the 5. Kamenev, Mrachkovsky and Smirnov were tried and execL:.ted in August 1936, Muralov, Drobnis People,' 'the Sun of Socialism' will have to account for what he has and Serebriakov in January 1937, and Mdivani and Okudzhava in July 1937. Rakoysky, arrested at done. He will have to account for the defeated Chinese revolution, for the end of 1936, was not tried until 1938. Andreas Nin, political secretary of the Spanish POUM. was arrested In Spain in June 1937, tortured and murdered by the Stalinists. the red plebiscite in Germany, for the defeat of the German proletariat, 6 Cavaignac was the French general responsible for suppression of the Parisian workers during the 3 for social fascism, for the things told to Mr. Howard , for his flattery of June Days of the 1848 Revolution. Gallifet was responsible for the massacre following the defeat Of 4 the Paris Commune. Trepov, governor-general of SI. Petersburg. led counterrevolutionary forces M. Laval -all acts of genius. In the 1905 Revolution, while Baron Wrangel was a leading White general in the Russian Civil War This trial will take place in the open and many a living and dead of 1918-21 witness will attend it. All will speak and this time will tell the truth, all the 7 Juan Negrin was a right-Wing Socialist who headed the Spanish Popular Front after the May Days of 1937; Jose Diaz was head of the Spanish CPo Both men were responsible for the bloody truth. All will testify-those who were slandered and those who were suppression of the left from 1937 on shot though innocent-and the international workers' movement will 8. German novelist Leon Feuchtwanger, whose book Moscow 1937 slavishly glorified the Stalin rehabilitate them, the Kamenevs, the Mrachkovskys, the Smirnovs and regime and justified the Moscow trials.

8 WORKERS VANGUARD interrogators told Leopold Trepper. not catch Abel for years, and only then militants such as Reiss, Sorge and the any instant -a Bukharin. a Piatakov And when the "Big Chief' refers to "us," because Hayhanen delivered him up on members of the Red Orchestra, the had suddenly risen in the dock to a platter: he did not even catch me. If he was speaking of that layer of veteran Mercaders and Zborowskis were the unmask their poor comrade lying ever there was a bubble reputation. it is through their last hours by command, militants from the 1920's who, because Hoover's." most consummately cynical hired as­ of the importance of their work, were thc fraudulent prosecutor, the abetting sassins. (In fact, there is considerable judges, the double-dealing inquisition, passed over by the Stalin purges. By the Despite his brilliant work, Philby came near to being caught when two of evidence suggesting that it was the gagged Party, the stupid and end of World War II, this layer had been terrorized Central Committee, the his circle, Burgess and Maclean, bolted "Etienne" who tipped off the NKVD largely expunged from the Soviet state concerning Reiss's movements and devastated Political Bureau, the Chief apparatus. Another of Trepper's exam­ together from the Foreign Office and ridden by his nightmare-what demor­ whereabouts, and thus played a key role alization there would have been in the iners, who was thoroughly familiar with suspicions as to a "Third Man" pointed at him. He was forced to resign from the in his murder.) With the minds of country, what jubilation in the capitalist the history of the Red Orchestra, had mercenaries, they were utterly uncon­ world. what headlines in the fascist extreme difficulty comprehending how SIS for several years, but the British press! 'Read all about it-the Moscow could pin nothing on him, and in due cerned about the world-historical mag­ a network could be built with so few nitude of their crimes. The fact that the Scandal, The Bolshevik Sink, The Chief professional intelligence personnel. The course he became a correspondent for Denounced by his Victims.' No, no-­ the London Observer in Beirut, from security organs of the Soviet state had better the end, any end." new generation ofSoviet spies was made come to rely on such murderous robots, up of decidedly different human materi­ which position he continued to work Was there no alternative? Trepper's with the SIS. Then in 1963, when the net filthy scum who could have served al. This was particularly true of the equally well as agents provocateurs for memoirs contain an insightful passage Russian agents, now the overwhelming finally began to close around him, he which goes to the nub of the issue. To escaped to Moscow, where he re­ any capitalist secret police, is an index of majority, who were essentially police­ the question "Who did protest at that emerged as a senior officer of the KGB. the Stalinist degeneration of the Rus­ men and bureaucrats. sian Revolution. time?" he writes: But even among those who joined the But how can it be that within one and "The Trotskyites can lay claim to this Soviet intelligence service of the 1930's Soviet Spies and Stalinist Terror the same government apparatus, at the honor. Following the example of their when Stalin's leader, who was rewarded for his domination was solidly Against the Workers Movement very heart of the military and security obstinacy with the end of an ice-axe, established, the spark of ideological While the Soviet intelligence appara­ organs of state power, there can be such they fought Stalinism to-the death, and commitment was not altogether absent. mortal enemies: the Zhukovs and they were the only ones who did. By the tus has successfully combatted its time of the great purges, they could only This can be seen in the case of the man imperialist counterparts, from the Nazi Tukhachevskys, the Abakumovs and who was described by longtime CIA shout their rebellion in the freezing Abwehr to the SIS and CIA, this was by Treppers, the Zborowskis and Reiss's­ wastelands where they had been director Allen Dulles as"the best spy the no means the sum total of its work. The the jailers and those who tomorrow will dragged in order to be exterminated. In Russians ever had": Kim Philby. In the internal contradictions could be seen, be their prisoners, the assassins and the camps, their conduct was admir­ introduction to his memoirs (My Silent able. But their voices were lost in the for example, in the conflict between the those who will be their victims, all War, New York: Grove Press, 1968), tundra. Fourth Department and the GPU. loyally working in the interests of the ~'Today, .. Philby justifies his decision to continue the Trotskyites have a right to Thus, far from contributing to the cause Kremlin? The answer is to be found in accuse those who once howled along his Soviet spy career "when some of the of proletarian revolution, the activities the fundamentally contradictory char­ with the wolves. Let them not forget, worst features of Stalinism became of many Soviet agents have consisted of acter of the Soviet. deformed workers however, that they had the enormous apparent": state. advantage over us of having a coherent forcing the counterrevolutionary poli­ political system capable of replacing "It seemed to me, when it became clear Stalin's capture of political power in that much was going badly wrong in the cies of the Kremlin down the throats of Stalinism. They had something to cling Soviet Union, that I had three possible the workers movement internationally. the USSR marked the imposition of to in the midst oftheir profound distress courses of action. First, I could give up Where they have encountered resist­ iron rule by a parasitic stratum that had at seeing the revolution betrayed. They did not 'confess,' for they knew that politics altogether. This I knew to be ance, the GPUjNKVDjKGB have escaped the control ofthe working class. quite impossible.... Second, I could their confession would serve neither the resorted to disrupting anti-Stalinist This bureaucracy sought above all to party nor socialism." continue political activity on a totally defend its own privileges. At times this different basis. But where was I to communist movements through provo­ "But their voices were lost in the would force it to resist encroachments go? ... I saw the road leading me into the cation and physical violence. During the tundra." In Trepper's view, then, the political position of the querulous or direct attack by one ofthe imperialist middle and late 1930's, the NKVD's Trotskyists were just as tragic as his outcast ... railing at the movement that camps, as in World War II. Then the foreign operations centered on this comrades. This, also, is the view of Isaac .. had let me down. at the God that had Stalinist ruling clique would be forced employment of gangster methods Deutscher whose three-volume biogra­ failed me.... to defend-albeit in a partial and "The third course of action open to me against the Trotskyists and those who phy ofTrotsky could have been entitled deformed manner-the proletarian was to stick it out. in the confident faith could be amalgamated with them, "The Prophet Doomed." (Not surpris­ that the principles of the Revolution property base on which its power rests. culminating in the assassination ofLeon ingly, in the post-Stalin "thaw" would outlive the aberration of individ­ Trotsky himself in August 1940. It was because of this face of the 1 uals. however enormous. It was the bureaucracy 'that dedicated Soviet Deutscher developed illusions that I ­ course I chose...." Among the Stalinist agents targeted Stalinism could be overcome by forces I : against the Trotskyist movement was intelligence officers could accomplish the outstanding work that they did within the bureaucracy-which was Philby, the son of an eccentric British one Mark Zborowski, alias "Etienne," exactly the hope which guided Trepper ) ; diplomat-explorer, was recruited to whose job it was to disrupt anything he against the Axis imperialists, although it was constantly sabotaged by their and his comrades. Everything in the I l what he took to be communism while an could. Worming his way into the history of the Red Orchestra demon­ undergraduate at Cambridge, an experi­ international secretariat of the Fourth superiors. But there is another face of the strates over and over that this hope was ence common to many left-wing British Internationalist movement he obtained in vain.) intellectuals in the 1930's. Instead of Kremlin as well, that of the state access to confidential correspondence, Trotsky wrote repeatedly in his last joining the Communist Party, he came prosecutor who demands "confessions" addresses and meetings, passing this years that it was not possible to assure into contact with the Soviet intelligence for imagined "crimes against the Soviet information on to his Kremlin masters. the defense of the Soviet Union by service and soon after became a military Union," and of the prison camp guard He was implicated in the 1936 theft by continuing to follow orders: correspondent for the prestigious Lon­ the GPU of part of Trotsky's archives. who executes jailed oppositionists while they sing the Internationale and vow to "The Fourth International can defend don Times with Franco's forces in Having become the closest collaborator the USSR only by the methods of Spain. Managing to get himself invited of Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov, when defend the USSR against imperialist revolutionary class struggle. To teach to join Britain's Secret Intelligence Sedov became mysteriously and violent­ attack. In the service of counterrevolu­ the workers correctly to understand the Service (SIS), Philby rose meteorically ly ill in February 1938, "Etienne" had tion, this gangsterism against commu­ class character of the state ... enables the workers to draw correct practical in its ranks while fulfilling his duties as a him taken to a Paris clinic run by nist opponents extended to every level of the Stalinist movement. Thus Trep­ conclusions in every given situation. Soviet intelligence officer. There was no Russian emigres known to have ties to While waging a tireless struggle against question as to his qualifications: he was the GPU. Several days later Sedov died per was assigned to break up Trotskyist the Moscow oligarchy, the Fourth a charming drinking companion, a loyal under extremely suspicious circum­ meetings in the Paris left Jewish milieu International decisively rejects any and sentimental friend, a careful and stances suggesting poisoning. Twenty in the early 1930's, and Reiss's widow policy that would aid imperialism reports. he was ordered to direct his against the USSR. conscientious intelligence analyst and a years later, when Zborowski was exam­ "... Only the world revolution can save man of civilized liberal convictions ined before a U.S. Senate committee activities toward repressing a "Trotsky­ the USSR for socialism. But the world ite Fifth Column" in Spain in 1937. who stayed out of intra-bureaucratic he admitted informing the GPU of revolution carries with it the inescap­ squabbling-except once, in 1945, when able blotting out of the Kremlin Sedov's presence at the clinic, thus "The Trotskyites Can Lay Claim oligarchy. he skillfully engineered the removal of confirming his hideous role in this to This Honor" "The Kremlin has on again revealed the director of the SIS counterintelli- ~ Stalinist murder. There is also reason to itself as the central est of defeatism. gence. department and gained as his believe that he was involved in the Running through the several books Only by destroyi this nest can the prize the directorship of section IX, murder of Rudolf Klement, the interna­ reviewed in this essay is a strongelement security of the U SR be safeguarded." -"Manifesto of the Fourth whose target was Soviet and Commu­ tional secretary of the Trotskyist move­ of tragedy. "I belong to a generation that has been sacrificed by history," International on the nist intelligence activities! ment, on the eve of the founding Imperialist War and the Pursuing his promising career in conference of the Fourth International wrote Trepper in the epilogue to his Proletarian Revolution," May British intelligence, Philby was posted in July 1938. autobiography. Elisabeth Poretsky's 1940 for a period to Washington, where he In contrast, Ramon Mercader, alias account of her husband and his com­ This is the fundamental truth which served as liaison officer to the FBI and Frank Jacson, alias Jacques Mornard, rades takes its title from the warning the "critical Stalinists" and capitulators CIA. There he obtained information had a single assignment: kill Trotsky. given her by an old friend in Moscow in failed to grasp. As the Left Opposition­ about British-American air drops of Befriending the American Trotskyist 1929: "Either the enemy will hang us or ists proclaimed this in front of Stalin's agents into Albania and the Ukraine, Sylvia Ageloff, he used this relationship our own people will shoot us." And, in firing squads, it was not just the tundra and doubtless much more. But it was a to strike up an acquaintance with the fact their lives were tragic, they were that listened. A new generation of threatening period of. witchhunts, as French syndicalist leader Rosmer who sacrificed by history, their own people Trotskyists will be and is being forged Philby was well aware. "It was the era of was visiting Trotsky in Mexico, and were their worst enemies. This is what through learning the lessons which McCarthy in full evil blast," he writes. through the Rosmers gained access to Trepper refused to face until he was those courageous revolutionaries de­ "It was the era of Hiss, Coplon, Fuchs, the Trotsky household. Meanwhile, a locked up in the Lubianka. fended with their lives. That is why the Gold, Greenglass, and the brave Stalinist assassination squad led by the Perhaps the most poignant Trotskyists were nottragic figures, and Rosenbergs-not to mention others celebrated Mexican painter Siqueiros expression of the dilemma of this layer those who remained silent or "howled who are still nameless." J. Edgar had attempted to murder the leader of of the Soviet bureaucracy, what we have with the wolves" were. But when the Hoover expressed to Philby his disdain the Fourth International in a May 1940 referred to in political shorthand as the Soviet working class rises up to expel for McCarthy. but Philby's evaluation machine gun raid on his house. Allow­ "Reiss faction," was a fictional account the Stalinist bureaucracy, they will of the FBI director was equally negative: ing a few months for things to calm by Victor Serge in his novel The Caseo! remember the vital work done by the "Hoover did not catch Maclean and down after this failure, Mercader struck Comrade Tulayev: heroic Soviet spies, the martyrs of the Burgcss: he did not catch Fuchs, and he "Nothing remains for us, then, but to go Red Orchestra and their comrades. Nor on August 20 and finished his grisly on serving nevertheless, and, if we are would not have caught the rest if the assignment for will they forget the infamy of the British had not caught Fuchs and Stalin and the Kremlin murdered. to submit. Would our worked brilliantly on his tangled emo­ bureaucracy. resistance do anything but make bad Zborowskis and Mercaders and their tions: he did not catch Lansdale; he did In contrast to selfless revolutionary worse? If-as they could have done at masters. To each his due.• 15 JULY 1977 9 this gesture was instead the culmination Kent State ... of the defeatist overall strategy of Tent Dockers ... LA. County (continued from page 12) City. While the SYL has been among the (continued from page 3) hardest fighters in the campaign to stop violence the state itselt had perpetrated! construction of the gym, it has insisted attack on the whole union, as the Workers ... Thus on July 6 the Akron Beacon that the masses of Kent State students, "Longshore Militant" notes: (continued from page 5) "PMA provoked this strike as part ofits Journal came out with an article about teachers and campus workers be mobil­ ed to bringing labor's enemies into the the protest which said: divide and conquer strategy. It aims to ized to force the ROTC and military rip the fLWU apart piece by piece. unions. County probation officers, for "SYL [Spartacus Youth League] mem­ recruiters off campus. Encouraged by the umon leadership's example, are members of the SEIU. No bers said they are committed to the active collaboration in slipping supple­ same cause as the peaceful protesters But the protesters voted less than judges and cops, probation overwhelmingly to get arrested and by 8 ment 3 [which invokes LWOP and the but preferred to use force to make their forced transfer provisions] through, officers are directly part of the repres­ opinions known. Students who have a.m. Tuesday there were 200 people PMA is now extending its attacks on sive state apparatus which seeks to lived peacefully on the site for weeks waiting on the site to be arrested. the Longshore Division beyond S.F. to preserve the draconian "law and order" verbally berated the SYL in debates Nearby 400 others -including the SYL, L.A. (and to Portland). By diverting which nearly came to blows. SYL ofa decaying capitalist system and must members ofothergroups, independents, L.A. cargo to S.F., the employers are members left within about two hours testing the solidarity between the ports be expelled from the labor movement. vowing to return daily. faculty members and clergymen in hopes of splitting the coast. We can't Only a vigorously fought strike can "Coalition members said the SYL protested the impending round-up. The let the bosses break coast-wide unity!" parry the blows being inflicted on the­ attempts '-to provoke confrontation police meticulously moved in, arresting could be handled by theirown trained Furthermore, Local 63 has been county workers and bring thousands of marshalls.... However, university offi­ first the parents ofthe martyred students singled out because it has managed to new members into the unions. But (who have been active in the campaign to cials have expressed doubt that coali­ bring new workers into the union at a several would-be militants active in the stop the gym), then. 35 individual tion members can handle a large time when most Locals are suffering county unions, including some support­ demonstration including outsiders and protesters, then the bulk of the group from PM A's job-slashingattacks. ed by the reformists of the Socialist have warned against bringing large who stood with arms interlocked in a numbers of supporters to join the The "Longshore Militant" has cor­ Workers Party (SWP) and the Progres­ passive-resistance stance. As they were protest when removal begins." rectly urged the formation of strike sive Labor Party, have focused on the carried out they chanted, "The People In a leaflet distributed on the campus solidarity committees to enforce the ban single demand for a county-wide mass United Will Never be Defeated," "Long July )0 the SYL denounced the incredi­ on handling diverted cargo. In the event meeting to vote on a strike. As in their Live the Spirit of Kent and Jackson ble hypocrisy of Kent State president that company maneuvers make it motivation for support to Steelworkers State," and "Four People Dead, Olds and the Akron Beacon Journal impossible to identify the diverted out-bureaucrat Ed Sadlowski, the SWP Rhoades Goes Free, That's What the who attempt toscapegoat the SYL while cargo, then a coast-wide shutdown must substitutes vague talk of "democracy" Rich Call Democracy." The SYLstarted themselves preparing at that very be declared to defend the isolated strike. for the class-struggle program necessary . up the chants "Cops Off Campus" and moment to mount an attack against the Such a strike must necessarily take up to fight the bosses. In this case, the SWP "Jail the Killers ofJackson and Kent"­ students. The SYL leaflet said: the issues facing the union as a whole: avoids the elementary and critical two slogans which were soon widely "The real provocateurs are those con­ the struggle to smash LWOP-type necessity of demanding a strike to spiring to mount an attack (what they picked up. schemes and the fight for jobs. Central defend the interests of the county After the arrests, mounted police call 'removal') against Kent State to this is the demand for a shorter workers. students protesting the adminstration's came up in a show of force and ordered workshift at no loss in pay, along with Militants must certainly fight for the attempts to bury the memory of the the group of protesters to leave. The the abolition of the steady man most democratic measures necessary to 1970 shootings. It is the police and the crowd initially refused until one of the National Guard who are the perpetra­ category-which is killing the ILWU's wage their struggle, including authori­ Coalition lawyers got them to leave by tors of violence; the armed force of the di~patching halls, a key union gain­ tative mass meetings and elected strike bourgeois state which slaughtered the the incredible argument that if they committees. But the only way to win the Vietnamese workers and peasants, and improved manning scales. These are stayed he would also have to stay and demands which the "Longshore Mili­ struggle for union democracy is to forge aided and abetted Pinochet's seizure of defend them, which would prevent him power in Chile and murdered Black tant" alone has been consistently a class-struggle leadership capable of Panther leaders Fred Hampton and from getting the arrested out of jail! championing.• ousting the current pro-capitalist bu­ Mark Clark in their beds.... Much of the crowd then left, but later reaucracy. -This necessary leadership "But the attempt to smear the SYL by about 60 people, including the SYL, cannot be built by limiting appeals to raising the spectre of indiscriminate went down to the Court House where a "democracy" or bread-and-butter is­ terror and violence will not work. The SL Conference SYL and the SL have a long and picket line was set up. Here the SYL (continued from page 3) sues, but must also fight politically, by documented history ofopposing provo­ chanted "Free the 194, Drop All calling for a workers party to defeat the cation and self-defeating adventurism." Charges Now," and "Cops OffCampus, fake-left organizations and their front bosses' Democrats and Republicans Initially a number of the more naive Move the Gym." At press time a mass groups (e.g., the InternationalSocialists' and establish a workers government. "Red Ride") recruit politically raw students were taken in by the Akron meeting has being held to decide upon Without such a leadership, the county further action.• minority-group youth who sit on the workers, like public employees Beacon Journal slanders which were, sidelines oftheparty, passively accepting moreover, picked up by Revolutionary throughout the country, will continue to the dictates of the leadership or suspi­ be the victimized scapegoats of the Student Brigade (RSB) members in the ciously. sniping at the program with Coalition who were looking to fuel their capitalists' fiscal crisis. The unrelenting guerrilla-warfare methods which can cutbacks in social services and benefits, own campaign of cop-baiting the SYL. only becloud the issues and corrode the But by the very next day the entire May meanwhile, will continue to plunge the debates. We want tocoherea black cadre nation's cities into festering rot. • 4th Coalition (the RSB grudgingly component, fully integrated into the included) had been won to the need to leadership of our party as into the defend the SYL when a second Akron ranks. The National Conference, where . Beacon Journal article July 7 accused many black comrades took anactive role CORRECTIONS the whole Coalition of "violence" in the documentary preparation and in because it had shouted down president In the article "James Earl Ray: The the debates, evidenced an increased Unanswered Questions" ( WV No. 162, Olds earlier in the day when he tried to understanding on the part of the black co-opt a demonstration in front of his 17 June), we incorrectly reported that comrades oftheir political responsibclity Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of office.. to their party. By late last week the University was Martin Luther King at the advice of his rapidly escalating its tactics. On Thurs­ Especially in this _period of relative lawyer Arthur Hanes. While Hanes was day, July 7, three Coalition l11embers "labor peace," a program based on the Ray's original lawyer, he subsequently were first savagely beaten, then arrested insistence that the center of gravity of obtained a new lawyer, Percy Foreman, for "trespassing" by the campus cops. social struggle must reside in the racially and it was at Foreman's advice that Ray On Saturday the Administration issued integrated workers movement may be entered a guilty plea. its first warning on the tent city and seen as abstract." Impulses to elevate In WVNo. 161 (lOJune), therewasan prepared to seek an injunction against work among black ghetto youth to a omission due to faulty telephone trans­ it. On Monday, July II, the injunction strategic substitute for a labor orienta­ mission in the "Longshore Militant" for an 8 a.m. July 12 deadline was tion, fueled by impatience, can reinforce leaflet printed under the title "Shut issued. young black militants' subjective identi­ Down West Coast Longshore!"The last At a mass meeting Monday evening, fication with the sufferings of their paragraph should begin "The Interna­ the protesters debated whether or not to "brothers" outside the organization. But tional and Local leadership have con­ get busted. While the RSB claimed that trans-class black solidarity, understand­ stantly tried to trick us into'voluntarily' courting arrest was a continuation of its able as the spontaneous response of the invoking Sup. 3 and cannot be relied on "offensivp" t:wtics, the SYL insisted that black masses to their most palpable to run an effective strike. To insure Workers oppression, can have no place inside the effective membership direction and ranks of an authentic communist control, and a solid coastwide action SL/SYL PUBLIC OFFICES Vanguard vanguard. The sectoralist consciousness there must be elected strike committees in every port representing boards. gangs, Marxist Literature MARXIST WORKING·CLASS WEEKLY OF induced by capitalist society's divisive THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE inequities is directly counterposed to etc.. and linked up coastwide." The BAY AREA communist consciousness, which from a italicized words were omitted in the Friday and Saturday 3:00-6:00 p.m. One year subscription (48 issues): $5­ Introductory offer: (16 issues): $2. Interna· core ofintransigent programmatic unity article as printed. 1634 Telegraph. 3rd floor tional rates: 48 issues-$20 airmail/$5 sea (near 17th Street) seeks to extend its tendrils into every mail; 16 introductory issues-$5 airmail. layer of the exploited and oppressed. Oakland, California Make checks payable/mail to: Spartacist , Phone 835-1535 Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, The discussion on the black question Now Available as a Pamphlet! CHICAGO NY 10001 at the Spartacist League's Fifth Nation­ Tuesday 4:30-8:00 p.m. -includes SPARTACIST al Conference marked an important step The Fight to Implement Saturday , 2:00-5:30 p.m. Name _ in the still incomplete and reversible Busing 650 South Clark 2nd floor process of cohering a black cadre .Chicago, Illinois For Labor/Black Defense to Stop Phone 427-()OO3 Address _ component of the Trotskyist vanguard Racist Attacks and to Smash Fascist nucleus. Upon this vital process hinges NEW YORK City _ Threats Monday-Friday " .. , ,. 6:30-9:00 p.m. the SL's ability to root itself among the Price: 75C Saturday , 1:00-4:00 p.m. State Zip~ advanced layers of the proletariat, 166 Make checks payable/mail to: 260 West Broadway, Room 522 particularly the black workers, a key Sparlacus Youth Publishing Co., Box 825. New York. New York future motor force for socialist Canal St. Station. New York. N.Y. 10013 Phone 925-5665 SUBSCRIBE NOW! revolution.•

10 WORKERS VANGUARD "

Stearns miners in trench outside union hall at Justus Mine.

Stearns Justus Mine was non-union with just a miners walked out over cutbacks in the one-year suspension for previous wild­ glance at mine conditions. Health and Retirement Fund, caused by cat activity last May. Strike ... the refusal of the employers' Bituminous Miners must oppose this vicious Gun Thugs, Cops and Coal Operators Association (BCOA) to (continued from page 12) Provocations witchhunt attempt. The politics of the transfer available cash and Miller's RSC are only a slightly spiced-Up bolster the men on duty. Miners Since last February, when Blue willing compliance. In an attempt to version of the business-unionist reform­ discussed both the terrible conditions Diamond began importing gun-toting head off a renewal and expansion of the ism of the now-defunct Miners for which led them to strike and the vicious goons from the Storm Security Service, wildcat when the annual two-week Democracy, whose leaders included tactics Blue Diamond has emploved to the picketers have faced a hail of pistol, vacation shutdown ended, Miller has Miller and Patrick. The Committee's crush their walkout. shotgun, rifle and semi-automatic gun­ declared the issue "national in scope" undeserved "radical" reputation is being Chief among the demands of the fire every night, and sometimes in broad and called for re-opening the contract to used as a scapegoat by the fractured Stearns strikers, and a norm for UMWA daylight. The small cabin which the discuss the issue. UMWA leadership lashing out at what mines, is the establishment of an elected miners erected on property they bought But Patrick exposed the real desire of it really fears and has been unable to union safety committee with the power adjacent to the picket line is riddled with all the UMWA tops when he told WV, "I control: the militancy which refuses to to pull workers out of dangerous areas. hundreds of bullet holes. On June 23, a would urge the coal miners to work...." die down in the coal fields. Grim testimony to the importance of striker was shot as he walked to his car Failure to confront the BCOA's this demand was given the day before, near the picket line. escalating provocations only fuels the when four miners were killed a mile But the strikers are not about to be coal operators' appetites to destroy the underground in St. Charles, Virginia. intimidated, and they know how to UMWA and saps the union's strength. The rally observed a moment of silence defend themselves. They dug trenches, John Cox, the union's director of for the dead and their families, and, no organizing, told WV that the cutback of built sandbag fortifications and ex­ ! doubt miners thought of the two panded the defenses in recent weeks. To medical benefits will further cripple the • Stear~s ~ miners who have been killed in date, four mine guards have been shot. union's attempt to organize non­ "accidents" since 1969. The night before the Whitley City rally, UMWA mines, which account for I mine guard Stanley Moore caughta slug nearly half the coal produced in the U.S. [ UMWA officials told WVthat the St. . in the chest. Miners said that just prior Three days after the cutbacks were Charles deaths were caused by an to the shooting they overheard Moore announced, the union lost a represen.ta­ explosion of methane gas. The S~ea.rns on a radio telephone call (phone lines tion vote in a District 30 mine which miners have good reason to fear similar into the mine site are severed and the organizers had expected to win. If the catastrophes in the gassy tunnels o.f the miners monitor the thugs' calls on their cutbacks are not reversed, more organ­ Justus Mine. In March 1976, 26 mmers own radio), instigating his fellow guards izing defeats can be expected. were killed in Blue Diamond's Scotia to "Shoot the dog shit out of them." The companies' eyes are now on the mine in a methane explosion. Shortly afterwards, Moore was flat on Stearns strike. If the UMWA is beaten Court suits filed by widows of the the ground and his friends were calling back, it will encourage other non-union Scotia miners have forced Blue Dia­ for an ambulance. coal companies to hardline it against the mond's owner, Gordon Bonnyman, to The miners are also prepared to stand union and reinforce sentiment in the testify on safety conditions in his mi.nes. up to the state police, who have BCOA to dissolve the national contract Indicative of the powerful forces lined regularly escorted company officials and bargain on a company-by-eomp~ny up against the miners, Blue Diamond's across the picket lines while refusing to basis. The break-up ,of industry-Wide lawyer is the former governor of "notice" the hundreds of rounds pour­ WV Photo bargaining and the UMWA's single Kentucky. Bonnyman baldly stated: ing down on the picket line. "They're not Harry Patrick (left) being inter­ contract for bituminous coal would be a "The general organiz~tional str~ctu~e going to run us off from here," one viewed by Workers Vanguard historic defeat, threatening the very and manner of conductmg operatIOns IS worker at the site vowed, "There's not reporter. backbone of the union. the same for each of the coal mining enough troopers in the state of UMWA organizers have raised the operations. The Scotia mine operation Instead of striking, Patrick vaguely picke~ing ~o Kentucky." possibility of expanding is typical of Blue Diamond's other co~l suggested, "There a.re other .ways to The strikers have also had to put up Blue Diamond's other two milles III mining operations ..." (quoted III handle this." Incredibly, Patnck even southeast Kentucky. Harry Patrick with innumerable instances of petty "! Mountain Life and Work, July 1977). opposes a strike, which is univ:rsal~y company harassment. Miners have had suggested bringing 5,000 miners to Indeed, the Stearns mine superintend­ predicted, when the contract expires III their home phones called by company Stearns for a mass marih. But these ent has conceded that methane detectors December: "The union doesn't need a ~ provocateurs every half hour all night pressure tactics, even implemented, on mine equipment are often discon­ strike." Faced with mounting BCOA t~e long. A member ofthe Stearns Women's are qualitatively insufficient to halt nected so that production can continue attacks on mine safety, the right to strike Club, which is patterned on the. Brook­ BCOA offensive behind Blue Dia­ regardless of the danger. over grievances and the ~i.ght to o~gan­ mond's union-busting attempts. A side Women's Club and which has ize, the miners need a militant natIOnal Miners working for the callous Blue played a promirient role in demonstr~­ national strike is needed. The miners, strike more now than ever. But none of repeatedly betrayed by their own "lead­ Diamond Co. who are not ripped apart tions at Blue Diamon<;l's headquarters III the UMWA's bureaucratic contenders in explosions face other deadly hazards. ers " must elect strike committees from Knoxville, Tennessee, also told WVthat are willing or prepared to lead it. Strikers described having to jump on ~o the'ir own ranks to wage this fight. the company has sent prostitutes the When the vacation period ended, and off improperly grounded, electri­ picket line in an effort to cause dissen­ Failure to forge a class-struggle leader­ nearly 13,000 West Virginia miners v.:illi~g­ cally powered mine equipment, being sion in the miners' homes. ship will squander the miners' resumed the strike against the benefit ness to fight and means the contlll~lllg careful to keep both feet together. One cutbacks. But all the UMWA leadership foot on the ground and one on the For a National Coal Strike! deterioration, and possible destructIOn, could think of was how to vilify the machine can result in instant electrocu­ of the UMWA.. For a year, the Stearns miners have strikers. Eighty out of 104 local presi­ tion: Cables with 41,600 volts often sag stood their ground. But the leaders of dents in District 17 met in Madison, beneath the ceilings of the tunnels. The the UMWA have left this fight isolated. West Virginia, on July 11 and ~on­ seven-ton vehicles which carry person­ At the rally, Harry Patrick pledged that demned the Right to Strike Committee SPARTACIST nel and equipment are frequently "The United Mine Workers does com­ (RSC), which they charged had a hand without brakes. , CANADA mit all of its resources to this strike." in instigating the renewed walkouts, as Several Stearns miners told of being Patrii;k's words were patent hogwash. "agitators" and "communists." The present when a federal safety inspector The most powerful resource of the local officers, worked up into a fury of Subscription: 12/'88r asked to see the notoriously dangerous UMWA is the combativity and solidari­ red-baiting, mandated the IEB repre­ (11 Ilau81) one-west section of the Justus pit. The ty of the ranks. But Patrick, n? less.t~an sentative from District 17 to go to mine superintendent, without blinking Miller or Patterson, opposes stnkmg Washington to get the International to Make~yable/mail to: .. Spartacist Canada Publishing ASSOCIation t~e an eye, denied knowing its location! A the coalfields, even when the miners' expel the leaders of the RSC from Box 6867, Station A number of workers agreed that a backs are to the wall. union. Two RSC spokesmen, Skip Toronto, Ontario, Canada UMWA member could tell that the Two weeks ago, 35,000 indignant Delano and Bruce Miller, just ~me offa 15 JULY 1977 11 WfJltNEItS "Ntil/'ltl)

WHITLEY CITY, Kentucky-Five hundred coal miners, their families and union supporters rallied here July 8 in solidarity with miners who have been on strike for nearly a year at the Justus Mine in nearby Stearns, Kentucky. After twelve months ofcompany provo­ cations, court fines anc; trumped-up indictments, as well as nightly barrages of high-powered gunfire from the hired thugs of the Blue Diamond Coal Company, the spirited rally reinforced the 160 striking miners in their determi­ nation to win a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) contract. Gathered at a wooded campground in lOO-degree weather, the unionists applauded solidarity messages and mountain music, sang traditional min­ ers' songs updated to blast Blue Dia­ mond and its officials and dined on an enormous pot-luck dinner. The first speaker was 73-year-old Minnie Luns­ ford, a leader ofthe Brookside Women's Club which faced down the Kentucky stilte police during the bitter 1973-74, 13-month strike in Harlan County. Recalling the history of violent class Stearns strikers at sandbags, their protection from company gun thugs at the picket site. warfare in this region, Lunsford said, "I remember bloody Harlan of the '30's, brought a $5,000 check for the Stearns aged Patrick's presence. Stearns miners. Miller, Patterson and and Stearns is just like it." Relief Fund, which has helped financial­ During the five-hour rally, hundreds Patrick-who are all equally anti­ A miner from the Tackett Creek local ly sustain the strikers. of issues of Workers Vanguard and strike-have busied themselves with in eastern Kentucky promised money The rally also featured UMWA Spartacist League solidarity leaflets clawing and scratching for electoral and militants for the Stearns struggle: secretary-treasurer Harry Patrick, who were distributed and eagerly read by the position, while the battle in Stearns "If you people here, you brothers, need was recently defeated in a bid for the miners and their families. The SL was raged. Many miners came backfor more men, we got them at District 19. I think union presidency by incumbent Arnold the first left tendency to publicize the WV's and some took small bundles to for every state trooper they throw in Miller in a three-way race which also Stearns strike; we have consistently distribute themselves. there, we can throw 25 union men in included IEB member Lee Roy Patter­ supported the miners' fight and exposed After the rally SL supporters there behind them." The International son. The possibility of an election rerun the bureaucratic squabbling at the accompanied about 40 strikers and Executive Board (lEB) representative as a result of a Patterson protest to the union's top that blocks effective, nation­ UMWA backers to the picket line to from District 6 in Ohio, Bill Lamb, anti-Miller IEB undoubtedly encour- wide solidarity strike action with the continued on page JJ 194 Dragged Off at Kent State Drop the Charges' KENT, Ohio. July I2-At 8 a.m. this cold blood by the National Guard morning 200 Kent State cops backed up during a protest against the U.S. with a squadron ofmounted police from invasion of Cambodia. the sheriffs office systematically began Throughout recent weeks the to arrest the protesters at Kent State university administration adamantly University's "Tent City." As approxi­ refused to stop the construction of the mately 400 supporters and observers $6-million gym which was clearly looked on, the protesters were carried intended to obliterate the memory ofthe off one-by-one to buses waiting nearby. martyred dead. Even while the adminis­ In the space of two hours 194 people tration was offering its phony "compro­ had been arrested in this manner and mises," such as state "mediat~s" and driven to the Portage County Court "double" injunctions, all of which were House in Ravenna where many were voted down by the protesters, it has been kept in the buses for hours until each had systematically building for the assault been individually taken into the court. which came today. charged with contempt, and had bail set On July 7 the campus cops attacked. at $250 apiece. At press time 125 had beat up and arrested three Coalition refused to post bail and are still in jail. members including Ron Kovic, a The round-up had been cynically paraplegic Vietnam veteran who was in prepared ever since the tent city took a wheelchair at the time! And even while shape two months ago. The camp was it was preparing once again to set upon an effort by the May 4th Coalition to the protesters, just as it had shot down stop the university from building a the four students before, the bourgeoisie • WV Photo gymnasium on the grassy hill where in was attempting fo smear the left for the Spartacus Youth League contingent at June demonstration on Kent State 1970 four students were gunned down in continued on page J0 campus. 12 15 JULY 1977