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NUMBER 93 25 CENTS ·z¢~ )(.-523 SEPTEMBER 1981 Union-Busting and Racist Reaction Reagan's Anti-Soviet War Drive Comes Home . sif - COMlROl~£~ ~~s'\\) Y?£~~~X/J~~l~
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PATCO picket line at Oakland airport. SL!SYL demands: "Labor: Shut down the airports!"
Ever since 1917 the world's capitalist industrial unions. in God's Eye one character is a com (lAM) and vice-chairman of Michael rulers have dreamed, intrigued and Unlike the usual union-busting mander notorious for destroying an Harrington's Democratic Socialist Or planned to destroy the gains of the attempts, Reagan's attack on PA TCO entire planet to suppress a rebellion. ganizing Committee. It just so happens Russian Bolshevik Revolution, the has nothing to do with dollars-and-cents When non-human intelligent beings are that the Machinists are a key union in greatest victory for the working class in economics, with driving down wages to discovered, this commander is put in the airlines industry. It was a strike by history. Today the United States-the increase profits. The government will charge of the expedition to their planet lAM airplane mechanics which in 1964 most powerful imperialist country on have to spend an enormous sum to train because, if he is that ruthless toward his broke the Kennedy / Johnson wage earth-is ruled by fanatics intent on thousands of new controllers and in the own species, he certainly won't be soft guidelines. By calling out his men wiping out the "aberration" of commu meantime the airlines will lose money toward non-humans. This captures Winpisinger could win this strike in nism with a wave of mushroom clouds due to reduced flights. What Reagan Reagan's attitude in the controllers days, dealing a powerful blow against across the Soviet Union. And Reagan's wants is a political demonstration that strike. If he will do this to Middle Reagan reaction on all fronts. Instead anti-Soviet -war drive also means war he will be completely ruthless and brutal America types, his own people so to this big shot social democrat has given against the American working class. to anyone who defies his will. speak, imagine what he will do to the go-ahead to lAM members to The two are inseparable. And this demonstration is all the blacks, radicals and foreigners! service planes guided by scab This basic truth, scoffed at or piously stronger in that the controllers had Faced with Reagan's massive union controllers. denied by liberals and reformists, is now thought they were Reagan people. busting attack, the immediate gut This is not just a conflict over wages demonstrated in the starkest way in the Overwhelmingly white, many Vietnam response of every worker should be: and benefits. What is at stake is the very air controllers strike. Reagan has fired vets, the con.trollers regarded them Solidarity Strikes to Shut Down the right of the 20 million public employees all 12,000 striking controllers and selves as middle-class "professionals" Airports! Yet predictably the cowardly in this country to strike, that is, to have declared that their union, PATCO, no rather than as blue-collar workers. In union bureaucracy has done nothing, real trade unions. This is a life-and longer exists. The American labor the anti-Soviet hysteria following the absolutely nothing, to support the death struggle which will affect the movement has not faced this kind of intervention in Afghanistan in late 1979, controllers strike. And it is not just the entire labor movement, indeed, all massive, savage union busting in half a New York controllers "boycotted" an right-wing Meanyite neanderthals like aspects of political life for the coming century, since the rise of the CIO in the Aeroflot jet carrying Russian ambassa AFL-CIO head Lane Kirkland who are period. 1930s. Just as Reagan is seeking to dor Dobrynin, threatening a possible allowing Reagan to make the air overturn the greatest victory of the crash. P A TCO, with its socially controllers a horrible example of what Carter Paved Way for Reagan working class internationally, the Rus conservative membership, was one of will happen to all those who defy him. Reaction sian Revolution, so he wants to reduce the few unions to endorse Reagan for America's most prominent "socialist" It is not only the air controllers who the American working class to the weak the presidency. labor leader is William Winpisinger, are surprised to find themselves the condition before the creation of mass In the science-fiction novel The Mote president of the Machinists union continued on page 10
Racist What Spartacists All 'ndochinti nus" ~ Reagan Fought for in Backs ?~~~~;;;$t the Vietnam ~_IfIi.'!.'>< .. Apartheid ::::: Antiwar Movement Butchers see page 6 see page 3 --;. ... -...
2 •• • YOUNG SPARTACUS
LZ SUSYL Launch Subscription Drlve-- Fight for Socialism! Join the SYL! ~G\H~nL~i"~'
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ADDRESS Quola Local Quola (In poinls) From '~Hail Khomeini" to "Hate Khomeini I"~ .. ; Iranian Left in Turmoil Gamma No sooner had the dust settled from and their student supporters abroad the spectacular June 28 bombing of the who all hailed Khomeini's ascent to Islamic Republican Party (lRP) head power-now chant "No to the reaction quarters in Teheran than Khomeini's ary regime in Iran!" Mujahedin sup firing squad~ swung into high gear. Well porters took over the Iranian interests over 500 opponents of the "imam's" section in Washington, D.C. on August theocratic dictatorship have been shot, 7, shouting "Death to the Khomeini including not only supporters of ex regime!" At New York demonstrations, president Bani-Sadr, but also those of the Maoist Peykar, the Iranian Student the Moslem populist Mujahedin Khalq Association-Left Platform and sup and left-wing organizations like the porters of the guerrillaist Fedayeen Fedayeen Khalq. Thousands more have around Ashraf Dehghani chanted been thrown into the dungeons built by "Down with the monarchy! No to Iranian fake-lefts look to Banl-Sadr, the now-dead shah, where they are Islamic Republic! Long live revolu Khomelni's loyal tortured by former agents of his notori tion!" In late July, Iranian students servant for two ous secret police, the SA VAK,who are chained themselves to the Statue of decades. now "following the imam's line." Liberty, while their European counter With the sword of Islam hanging over parts attempted to seize Iranian embas their heads, Iranian leftists, populists sies in protest against Khomeini's savage repression, just as they did previously to demonstrate against the shah's white terror. Young Sparlacus Two years ago the international and political independence of the none other than Bani-Sadr, the ayatol Spartacist tendency (iSt) warned that working class to the so-called "progres lah's "secular" front man for two Young Spartacus (ISSN 0162-2692) is the Khomeini would be no less reactionary sive," "democratic" and "anti decades and later president of the newspa,per of the Spartacus Youth Leogue. The than the shah and demanded "Down imperialist" bourgeoisie. It is this very "Islamic RepUblic." Until his downfall, Sportocus Youth League. youth section of the Sportocist Leoque. is 0 sociolist youth with the shah! Down with the mullahs! dogma that has repeatedly beheaded the he loyally served his "imam" and Great organization which intervenes in sociol struggles For workers revQlution in Iran!" Those working class, from China in 1927 to Persian chauvinism-witness the brutal ormed with 0 working-doss progrOIn. based on the politics of Morx. Lenin ond Trotsky. who hate Khomeini today denounced us Chile in 1973. suppression of the Kurds and Turko Editoriol Boord: Keith Anderson. Bonnie Brodie. in 1979 as being inspired by the CIA and Today the pro-Moscow Stalinist mans, and the Iran-Iraq war over Ed Jorvis. Dorothy London, J. Morlow(editor). Amy SA VAK and attempted to physically Tudeh party gives groveling support to Khuzistan. Bani-Sadr and Mujahedin Roth break up our public meetings on Iran. Khomeini. In recent bloody street leader Massoud Rajavi were flown- by Production monoger: Amy "Roth Only now when Khomeini's hands are clashes between the IRP and the Iranian the shah's personal pilot!-to asylum in Circulotion monager: Kate Kelsey drenched with blood do they issue left, Tudeh members manned the France, where they set up an exile Nine issues yearly; published' monthly except belated "warnings" and denounce the barricades on the side of the mullahs. government. Many of those now around December/Jonuory ond June/July/ August. by mullahs' repression, While excoriating Tudeh for this treach Bani-Sadr are big bourgeois seeking a the Spa,rtocus Youth Publishing Co., 41 Worren Street, New York, NY 10007. Telephone: 732- Those Iranian leftists who seek ery, Iranian leftists do not call into capitalist "modernizing" alternative to 7867 (Editoriol, Business). Address 011 corre Marxist clarity must critically examine question the two-stage methodology of Khomeini who will play the role to spondence to: Box 3118, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008. Domestic subscriptions: the political premises which led them to which Tudeh is the historical exponent which the shah aspired but failed. $2.00 per yeor. Second-class postage paid at New embrace Khomeini as "progressive" and in Iran. The Fedayeen has split into a ''majori York, NY. "anti-imperialist." Specifically, this Khomeini's main target so far has ty" which, in alliance with Tudeh, bows Opinions expressed in signed orticles or let means the Menshevik/Stalinist dogma been the Mujahedin, who claim to to Khomeini; a "minority," which while ters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. of the two-stage "revolution," which combine the Koran with the Communist claiming to be a "communist" left split, indefinitely postpones the socialist Manifesto. Seeking a more "democrat has dropped criticism of Bani-Sadrfor a No. 93 September 1981 revolution, subordinating the interests ic" Islamic republic, they have turned to continued on page 9 SEPTEMBER 1981 3 Cuban troops if they attempt to defend SW APO. On August 25 South Africa Angola Invasion Kicks Off Sp-ringboks U.S. Tour launched its large-scale invasion of Angola, which Reagan's mouthpieces promptly excused by referring to "Cu ban combat forces" and "Soviet originated arms." The U.S.-encouraged invasion was aimed at SW APO, the nationalist government in Luanda and the Cuban Racist Reagan Backs military forces that back it. We call for the military victory of SW APO over South African imperialism, but inde pendence for Namibia will be shelved for years if South Africa-in its escalat ing military adventures-defeats the forces of Angola and of the Cuban deformed workers state. Furthermore, a Apartheid Butchers South African victory would encourage Reagan's global war drive against Cuba and-most fundamentally-the Soviet South Africa's Springboks rugby sive change· in South Africa. The to cost more than it is worth" economi Union. While giving no political sup team, pampered showpiece of racist assistant secretary of state for African cally and politically. A Rockefeller port to the Castro and Brezhnev apartheid, will be in the United States affairs, Chester Crocker, has sought to Foundation report recommended a bureaucracies which must be over this month. The matches scheduled for provide that fig leaf by referring to different approach from Reagan's: thrown through workers political revo Chicago, Albany and New York are a "autocratically imposed reforms" that appeasing South African blacks is the lution, Trotskyists unconditionally de demonstration of Reagan's growing are supposed to lead to the eventual best way to protect U.S. investments fend Cuba and the Soviet degenerated anti-Soviet alliance with the white dismantling of apartheid (Foreign and counter the USSR in Africa workers state against imperialist at supremacist Pretoria regime. Even the Affairs, Winter 1980-81). What "re (Guardian, 10 June). All wings of the tempts to restore capitalism. Let the New York Times(l4August) recognizes forms"? Crocker points to the removal U.S. bourgeoisie embrace the same MPLA, SWAPO and Cuban forces that the purpose of this athletic tour is of certain barriers to "black economic goal: defeat social revolution in Africa. make Angola into a graveyard for the· "to demonstrate a new friendliness opportunity" and "mobility," while South Africa is more than willing to apartheid state's army! toward South Africa." The intended others glowingly tout the new "Iega:lity" be Reagan's cat's paw against the Cuban fruits of this alliance are the preserva of black trade unions. troops in Angola, where SW APO has The Main Enemy Is at Home! tion of apartheid, South Africa's annex These "reforms" are a sham! The bases. Reagan's election accompanied a ation of mineral-rich Namibia and the pressure of an intense shortage of widening of South African operations in Contrary to the claims of liberal toppling of the Cuban-backed govern labor-especially skilled labor-has Namibia, which the apartheid rulers moralists, the U.S. government has ment in Angola. The Springboks' induced the Botha regime to institute have every intention of keeping as their always been an enemy of the oppressed mission is an affront to American blacks certain changes designed to strengthen colony. With the president-elect's tacit and all who detest South Africa's apartheid by making it more consistent support, they scuttled the January South African black. The "democratic" imperialists won't lift a finger to change apartheid oppression and seek its with the demands of capitalist exploita Geneva negotiations with SW APO and apartheid, the system that guarantees destruction. tion. The trade-union "reforms" launched an attack on SWAPO posi their superprofits. Unlike liberal moral which continue to ban multi-racial tions in Angola the next day. There are A Springboks tour through New ists who call on companies like Ford to Zealand in August provoked massive unions and give white unions veto now over 100,000 South African troops power over industrial agreements and police in Namibia and some 40 give up their profits and close their protests, including a one-day strike by plants in South Africa, we call on the were instituted to clamp a lid on military bases along the southern border ship workers. And for good reason. The black workers to take over those plants growing black worker militancy. While of Angola. team (which is 95 percent white) is a through socialist revolution! symbol of the apartheid system, which passing laws for the legal "recognition" In April the Reagan administration deprives non-whites-80 percent of the (read shackling) of black unions, the came up with a "solution" to the war in Reformist outfits like Youth Against population-of citizenship rights; herds government is quietly drawing up plans Namibia that sounded more like a War and Fascism now call on the U.S. millions of blacks into barren and for busting the more militant black declaration of war: Cuban troops government to· revoke the Springboks' poverty stricken bantustans; and ex workers'. organizations that are "deter should withdraw from Angola, and visas. Such appeals perpetuate the lie cludes the black populace from access to mined to be outspoken on political Jonas Savimbi, UNITA guerrilla leader that the U.S. bourgeoisie is more education, culture, athletics, etc. issues" (New York Times, 10 August). and pro-South African quisling, should democratic and fair-minded than those The American tour comes at a time be included in Angola's government! butchers in Pretoria. But who dropped Black Proletariat Will Smash And South Africa is marching to this nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities? when the crimes of the apartheid Apartheid! butchers are glaringly obvious. Last tune of provocation. Pretoria recently Who killed millions in Vietnam? Who week South Africa launched a major The dramatic guerrilla actions of the announced a 40 percent increase in its sponsors massacres in Central America? invasion into Angola, annihilating African National Congress (ANC) military budget to counter "external We don't call on the super-criminals to whole towns as the forces sweep toward recently in the heart of Afrikanerdom threats." In August the commander of punish their junior partners. Rather, we Soviet-installed radar and missile in have acutely embarrassed the Botha South African forces in Namibia de seek to drive the Springboks out stallations. Internally, the regime's government. But random bombings and clared that a newly installed Soviet-built through mass protest and labor action. repression of anti-apartheid fighters has attacks on police stations by petty radar system and missile facility would And we eagerly work toward the day intensified in recent months with mass bourgeois guerrillas will never bring not prevent continued attacks into when those super-criminals are brought jailings of black trade unionists, the down the powerfully armed apartheid Angola, and he went on to threaten to account by a workers government in exiling of thousands of urban blacks to regime. The white ruling class correctly conventional war against Angolan or North America .• sees its main threat in politically "homelands" they have never seen and ADN,GDR death sentences against nationalist conscious black workers. In 1980 black guerrillas. union membership tripled to over 200,000, . and this year strikes have While the dirty work of arranging the averaged one per day. InJulythousands Springboks tour is in the hands of an of mine workers struck for the first time obscure rugby club, the real host is the in several years, heralding the imminent . Reagan administration. Having spread of black unionism to that key scrapped Carter's "human rights" hy section of the working class. Most pocrisy, Reagan is reaching out to any disturbing to the ruling class has been "authoritarian" dictatorship that will the dramatic growth ofthe unions which join his war drive against the Soviet refuse to register with the government or degenerated workers state. The sedu accept its straitjacket "reforms." lous work of mending U.S. ties to the Pretoria regime of P. W. Botha has The black proletariat of South Africa included meetings with the South holds the hammer that will smash African foreign minister and a series of apartheid. The black and "coloured" secret consultations with South African workers in the mines and the factories military leaders. Haig's call in January have tremendous social power, the for placing South Africa under NATO's power to deprive the capitalists of their protective shield and Reagan's repeated profits. This strategic position within efforts to repeal the Clark Amendment the country's economy will enable the (which hampers open U.S. military aid black and coloured proletariat to topple to pro-imperialist guerrillas in Angola) the apartheid regime and struggle for a underscore the military basis of this black-centered workers republic. This deepening alliance. Today the guns are end requires the construction of a pointed at the South West Africa revolutionary vanguard party. For a People's Organization (SWAPO), the Trotskyist party in South Africa! Cuban troops in Angola- and the petty bourgeois government in Luanda. But Namibia: Another Hot Spot in the ultimate target of the U.S./South Reagan's Cold War Africa axis is the Soviet degenerated Reagan's blatant support for apart workers state. Down with the heid has evoked debate within the U.S. Washington/Pretoria Alliance! Smash ruling class. The Washington Post Apartheid! Springboks Out! wrote in April that "the major problem Pretoria's May 1978 Angola invasion-mass grave was ''fInal bantustan" for Reagan's pro-apartheid diplomacy with the new Reagan policy is not that it 600 men, women and children. needs its fig leaf, the illusion of progres- lacks sensitivity [!] but that it is certain q 4 YOUNG SPARTACUS SVSYL Sue· California Attorney General Deukmejian Spartacist League: Workers Party Has the Right to Organize! We print below the statement by AI this same kind of government violence. We are not terrorists, but Marxist criminals. We demand that our names Nelson ofthe Spartacist League Central We do not intend to meet the fate ofthe revolutionists, Trotskyists, who oppose be removed from this report. With all Committee at an SL/SYL protest Black Panther Party. We do not intend terrorism as a futile, despairing strategy our political, legal and moral resources, demonstration and press confetence on to be nameless, faceless victims who can that has turned away from the working we will fight this sinister effort to set us July 23 outside offices of California with impunity be blown away in the class struggle to abolish capitalism. We up for government persecution and state attorney general George Deukme night. will not be branded as terrorists and violence .• jian in San Francisco. The efforts of the Spartacist League in California and elsewhere are to Today, legal papers were served on organize a workers party to struggle for California Attorney General George the immediate and ultimate interests of Deukmejian at his San Francisco office. the working class. The working class Press conferences and demonstrations and its party have the right to organize. are being held outside Deukmejian's But Deukmejian willfully confuses ~ offices in San Francisco, Sacramento, Marxist education with terrorism. Los Angeles and San Diego. Socialists who believe that the Soviet MUlZlE5 Union is right in Afghanistan, who are The Spartacist League and Spartacus for the victory of leftist insurgents in El Youth League, Marxist political organi Salvador, have the right to say so in the zations, are suing Deukmejian for FR(E wrongfully including and characterizing labor movement without being labeled as terrorists. The intent of this report is us as "terrorists" in his 1979 "Report on Organized Crime in California." to restrict us from carrying out our SPEECH In Part II on "Terrorism," Deukme activities by the not so implicit threat of jian makes clear who is targeted. The murder. SYL/SYL report whitewashes the KKK and Nazis. Deukmejian wants to muzzle free demonstrations In speech. He expects a new lease on legal It downplays their threat to blacks, four major Chicanos, Jews and the labor move witchhunting. Diane Watson's Senate California cities protested ment, instead focusing on so-called Bill 267, written with the guiding hand of Deukmejian, is a new version of the Deukmejlan's "extremists of the left." According to notorious Smith ACt of 1940. The labeling this report the real danger of the KKK/ Attorney General speaks openly of the Trotskyists as Nazis lies not in their racist terroristic need to "infiltrate" the "violence prone" "terrorists. " actions, but "in their ability to create groups and do "police undercover trouble by attracting violence from work." This bill, which purports to be .,.....,. j ~ those on the extreme left." aimed at the Klan and Nazis, will not be This report is a classic attempt to use used against these fascists. Instead, it the terrorist right as an excuse to go will be used to persecute and harass the after the left and the labor movement. In left and labor movement. it we are described as "a dangerous faction with which law enforcement would have to deal." We are described 1979 as yet another dangerous faction often travel widely in California and as a species of outlaws, terrorists and -from the California attorney g~ner with which law enforcement would out-of-state in order to attend rallies criminals and are lumped in with the aI's annual report, "Organized Crime have to deal. So close are their radical sponsored by their groups, and many Manson Family, the SLA, Hell's An in California-1979," Part 2 "Terror ideology and advocacy of violence that convicted several gels, Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brother ism," Section "Political Terrorism": members of one group oun .. also peace officers, hood and Black Guerrilla Family. They and carrying Deukmejian's aim is clear. The .. Left- Wing: Extreme Thirty-,eight sub- Spartacist League is proclaimed to be primarily the members of the outside the law. We are labeled as (PLP), the Party, when dangerous people to be dealt with Against 11, 1979, in militarily, "mad dogs" to be shot down. Revolutionary , Carolina, for Ten years ago this report would have (RCP) and the ns carrying concealed weapons, were included the Black Panther Party. In its Party, along with IDSt right-wing extremists to urging found to be in possession of rifles, best days the Black Panthers attracted a League (SYL), thewS"partacist League violent and criminal activities in labor shotguns and pistols, mostly high serious layer of young militants who and various self-proclaimed militant disputes and occupation by force of caliber. Several of those arrested were tried to form a movement for black caucuses of labor unions emerged in federal office buildings. Members in possession of three handguns each." social liberation. They were destroyed by a coordinated governmental cam paign of slander, ,provocation and murder. This has been well documented. Deukmejian's report is a murderous effort to set the Spartacist League up for -I TODAV 1 1,.. ~J~il~ll- SL Suit Marxists claim official Q)akla!l_~_i!ibunr IGroup Sues AG Needs $$$ has defamed group rMarxists sue Deukmejian II Over 'Terrorist' SACRAMENTO SEPTEMBER 1981 5 Young S.partacus Supplement to YWLL Convention: We Are the 'Party of the Russian Revolution! The Young Workers liberation day, thanks to the CPo The Chicago Red League (YWLL), youth group of the Squad didn't call out the troops merely Communist Party (CP), held its Fifth as a favor to the CP; certainly the CP National Conference in New York City gave the go-ahead to the cops, but the June 26-30. Conference pqrticipants whole operation stinks of the, FBI. were treated to boring speeches, orches trated applause and workshops where "Put the Butchers on the Runl CP/YWLL leaders pushed "detente" Leftist Rebels Need Russian between the Soviet Union and war Gunsl" crazy Reagan. While the most intense discussion inside the conference was ' While the CP /YWLL acts as loyal waterboys for the mythical "progres about the use ofbake sales and discos to sive" bourgeoisie in the U.S.--calling help YWLL youth pay for trips to cops on those who demand battlefield Moscow and Cuba, many participants .victory of the Salvadoran in.surgents, got a lesson in politics outside the conference. refusing to raise the urgent question of defense of the USSR and Cuba-its As soon as S Y L supporters arrived to mentors in Moscow and Havana pursue distribute our literature, cPt YWLL honchos called on Columbia University this suicidal class collaboration on a security guards to move us away from world scale. Call it detente, call it the conference entrance, hoping to seal "peaceful coexistence," what it means is off YWLLers from our Trotskyist selling out anti-capitalist struggles the politics. Collaboration with the C(Jps world over. In EI Salvador the code against the communists isn't new to the word for this sellout is "negotiated Stalinists. In Chicago on May 30, the settlement" or "political solution." CP called on the notoriously racist, Anti-Imperialist Contingent, Washington, D.C., May 3. Trotskyists said Asked about Soviet arms to the Salva murderous city cops to physically "Defense of Cuba, USSR begins in EI Salvador!" doran rebels, Brezhnev spokesman intimidate and exclude the SL/SYL Zamyatin replied: "The Soviet Union from a march and rally protesting U. S. picket lines should be built and not "differ" with genuine anti-imperialism does not provide EI Salvador with arms. involvement in El Salvador! A letter by crossed; if you are for smashing the Ku and Soviet defensism-it is actively It never has. It never will." That is nothing less than an outright statement a CP member in Iowa to the CP Klux Klan through labor/black mobili- hostile to such po~itics. To prove just leadership protesting this criminal ,zatiori; if you are for defending the how far it will go to protect the anti of treachery! Brezhnev & Co. believe atrocity was distributed to conference Soviet degenerated workers state 'revolutionary, liberal domination of El that such "reasonableness" can seduce U.S. imperialism into detente. What a attendees by the SYL (see Workers against imperialism and ousting the Salvador protests, the CP clllled on ·the dream! Defense of the USSR requires Vanguard No. 283, 19 June, for afull Stalinist bureaucracy through political viciously racist Chicago cops May 30 to the defeat of the butchers wielding reprint). This protest, which had been revolution-in short, if you are for cordon off our contingent. Mounted Reagan's guns and flying Reagan's suppressed within the cPt YWLL, was working-class revolution instead of police and club-wielding foot patrols eagerly read by many members of the Stalinist reformism,then you belong in sexually harassed, racially taunted and helicopters under the guidance of YWLL. ' the ranks of the' Spartacus Youth threatened the ISO-strong Anti Reagan's Green Berets. Russia:, Send Despite the Stalinists' police-assisted League! Imperialist Contingent marching in the arms to the rebels! effort to prevent conference participants Chicago EI Salvador demonstration Should the U.S. get its victory in El from having access to Trotskyist poli EI Salvador: "Which Side Are You called by the CP and supporters. So vile Salvador the results will far exceed the tics, the SL/ SYL sold over 60 pieces of On?" was this action that it evoked protest mass slaughter sure to take place in El communist literature and distribUJed Only one side can win in the civil war within the CP itself. CP member Salvador itself. It will embolden close to 1,000 copies of "We Are the which today rages in El Salvador Michael Messina wrote to the Iowa CP: Reagan/Haig in their primary objective: Party of the Russian Revolution,'" a between the sadistic U.S.-backed junta "The SL m-arched under the banners overturning the revolutions in Cuba and 'Military Victory to the Leftist Insur ultimately the USSR. As we explained Young Spartacus supplement reprinted and the leftist-led insurgent masses. For gents', and 'Defense of Cuba and the below. American leftists the question is simply: USSR begins in EI Salvador'. As a in Young Spartacus ("Defend Cuba!" which side are you on? In the recent' communist I support these slogans, and May 1981): if I had been in Chicago I would have "But a real defense of Cuba is not, as protests against U.S. involvement in El been found under that banner. But, Castro would have it, a 'political Reagan and Haig have chosen EI Salvador, the elementary anti even if I did not support the SL's solution' in EI Salvador, cheating the Salvador to be the front line of their imperialist demand for Military Victory slogans, I would stilI support their right workers and peasants out of the victory bloody war drive against the Soviet to the Leftist Insurgents in EI Salvador to express themselves without police they are shedding their blood for, Union. In demonstrations across the was taken up only by Anti-Imperialist oppression, and when that op{,ression is leaving the regime's terror apparatus instigated by the Communist Party, intact to extract a terrible vengeance. country demanding an end to U.S. Contingents organized by the SL/SYL. then I believe we have a major scandal Appeasement only emboldens the intervention in El Salvador, only one The task of defending Cuba and the on our hands. I am writing this letter to rapacious imperialists, as the Cuban organization has vigorously cam USSR-posed point blank in Central express my outrage and to protest the missile crisis and its aftermath showed. paigned in defense of Cuba and the America today-was taken up only by action of the Party in the strongest A real defense of Cuba and Russia USSR against U.S. imperialism. Was it terms I can." means the defeat of U.S. imperialism, the Trotskyist ,SL/SYL. The SYL is -Letter to Tim Yeager, Iowa CP, the wresting of the working people of the Communist Party? No! It was the organizing radical youth against 0/1 8 June 1981 the world from the grip of capitalist Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth wings of U.S. imperialism and we've League (SL/SYL)! One and only one been successful. You don't have to be a No leftist demonstrator was safe that continued on page 11 tendency has intervened 'in demonstra seasoned Marxist theoretician to see tions this spring to call for the military that the alternatives for the insurgent . victory of the leftist insurgents in EI Salvadoran masses are revolution or Salvador against the Reagan-backed death. junta butchers. The Young Workers The Communist Party, the Young Liberation League? Wrong again! It was Workers Liberation League and a host the Trotskyist SL/SYL! of no less reformist orgainzations refuse , So what has the CP /YWLL done? to take a side in the Salvadoran civil They've tried to silence the real revolu war, a betrayal not only ofthe Salvador , ' tionaries with goons. And when that an masses who have fought and died for failed they brought in the same cops such victory but also of the fight to stop who killed Black Panther leader Fred the anti-Soviet war drive where it Hampton to do their dirty work for counts. The reformists consciously them! All the CP/YWLL's talk about tailor protest actions in order to "peace, jobs and equality" can't disguise befriend a tiny handful of Democratic the truth: the Stalinists are willing to Party "liberals" who oppose some of bloc with the most repressive forces of Reagan's policies for their own (bour capitalist society to defend their dead geois) reasons. These liberal luminaries end "alliance" with liberal imperialists would no more march for the defeat of like Bella Abzug~ U.S. imperialism and iis henchmen in EI But the young workers and students Salvador than they would organize attending their first YWLL conference workers revolution against their own " May 30-CP Stalinists called on Chicago cossacks to exclude do have a choice: the real communist class here. revolutionaries. program of the SL/SYL. If you think The CP /YWLL does not simply . ..,...... ~~ "T." YOUNG SPARTACUS 6 From Prates What Spc Fougt in the V Printed below is thefirst portion ofan the Tet Offensive. A few months later And the antiwar movement edited transcript of a talk given by Eugene McCarthy announced that he basically was a support group Spartacist League Central Committee would run against Lyndon Johnson as for the liberal wing of the Antiwar IV member Joseph Seymour at the Sparta an "antiwar candidate." Then Bobby American ruling class. cist Educational Weekend in New York Kennedy announced that he too would We in the Spartacist League City on June 6. The speech was run against Johnson as an "antiwar' (SL) did not for this reason turn originally titled, "Vietnam: Bourgeois candidate." Johnson announced he our backs on the antiwar movement, the negative lessons of the antiwar Defeatism, Detente, Cold War II." Its would not seek re-election and .would which involved the radicalization of movement, so that the next time conclusion will appear in the next issue begin negotiations with the North hundreds of thousands, mainly of around, which is this time around, we of Young Spartacus. Vietnamese. This piece oftiming was, as student youth. Quite the contrary, we will change things for the better. we say, no accident. sought to transform the antiwar move Now, it's important for those of you In the Tet Offensive the North ment into an anti-capitalist movement. who didn't live through it to get some Part One Vietnamese army captured the major We said it was not possible to strike a sense of the political climate of the early northern city of Hue. The Viet Cong decisive blow against U.S. imperialism This rather posh Central Park South '70s because it was very, very different captured large sections of Saigon. A from within without mobilizing the from what we face today. At no point surrounding (well, this particular room Viet Cong suicide commando group power of the working class, - without since the beginning of the Cold War in is not all that posh) should not disguise actually captured for a time the U.S. going after the central contradiction in the mid-1940s has there been a greater the fact that this educational takes place rejection of and opposition to anti at a time when the government of the most powerful capitalist country on communist militarism than in the last earth, namely this one, is on 'a straight years of the Vietnam War. All of the anti-communist· sentiment and fervor course toward war with the Soviet Telegram "to.-Ho,~,.Cbi-Minh which had sustained the Cold War for degenerated workers state. The Reagan 20 years was slowly drained away in the administration came into office intent Sunday, 7 February 1965 swamps of Vietnam. By 1970 probably on recapturing the dominance which the 'ilO absolute majority of the American U.S. had in the world before its defeat in President Ho Chi Minh, people wanted to pull out of Vietnam no Vietnam. And since the United States matter what, even if this meant a does not, in fact, have the economic and Democratic Republic of Vietnam Communist victory. Antiwar activism military capacity to achieve this, we live Hanoi, North Vietnam had begun to extend beyond its original in very dangerous times indeed. That campus base. If Nixon had re-escalated sets the background for this talk. Spartacist in fullest solidarity with defense of your the war sharply on the ground or had the In the past few months we've seen , war dragged on another couple of years, what comrade Norden has called "a country against attack by United States there probably woulQ have been labor flurry of scared liberalism," mainly imperialism. Heroic struggle of Vietnamese strikes against the war. We were just at centered on El Salvador. There are working people furthers the American revolution. the edge of that. warnings in the liberal press and by In Vietnam itself the morale of the liberal spokesmen that Reagan's poli Spartacist Editorial Board army simply collapsed. The soldiers cies will lead us into "another Vietnam." turned into a bunch of spaced-out The reformist organizers of the El potheads who would just as soon or Salvador protests either proclaim the embassy in Saigon. And American this society. We raised the slogan: even sooner frag their officers than fight need for or proclaim the beginning of casualties went soaring. Between 1961 "Victory for the Vietnamese Revolu the Viet Congo That's one of the reasons another Vietnam antiwar movement. and 1967 u.s. soldiers killed in Vietnam tion! All Indochina Must Go Commu the draft was abolished right after the Today the old Vietnam antiwar move totaled about 16,000. In 1968 alone nist!" We agitated for labor strikes U.S. pulled out. ment is held up as the great success story 15,000 American soldiers were killed, against the war. We demanded: "Bour So the Nixon/Kissinger so-called of rad-lib activism in American politics. mainly in the first half ofthe year. It was geoisie Out of the Antiwar Movement! detente policies were quite popular It is held up as a model to be emulated. these numbers, not the numbers on the Break with the Imperialist Doves! For a because people believed that better I suppose the official rad~lib versiOn big peace crawls, which decided U.S. Workers Party!" ~ goes something like this (with a little ruling-class policy toward the war. polemical exaggeration, as we say in the However, the war did not end that Initially the Johnson administration way. It did not end with the U.S. forced trade): Somehow by accident 'the U.S. claimed that the Tet Offensive was a government stumbled into this terrible, out of Vietnam by an upsurge of class great defeat for the enemy. To this struggle at home. Rather in early 1973 senseless war in Southeast Asia. But Bobby Kennedy replied that a few more never fear, pretty soon all men of good Nixon/Kissinger negotiated a political vic,:tories like this and we're done for: compromise, the best they could. get will-first, wise college professors and "Our enemy, savagely striking at will their idealistic students, and also Sun across all of South Vietnam, has finally given their weakness on the battlefield. day school teachers and their even more shattered the officiallllusion with which At that point the Vietnam antiwar we have concealed our true circum movement simply collapsed, although idealistic students, and housewives-all stances even from ourselves .... got together in this inspiring movement. the war itself went on for another two "First, that a total military victory is years. They sent letters to their congressmen not within si~ht or around the corner; and held peaceful vigils. And soon they that, in fact, It is probably beyond our grasp .... " From the "Vietnam Syndrome" to won over the more intelligent, more Cold War II humane members of the ruling estab So Kennedy concluded that "a political lishment; the Bobby Kennedys and compromise is not just the best path to Comrade Marx used to say that our Eugene McCarthys saw the light. And peace, but the only path" (New York business was not just to understand the this wonderful movement grew and Times,·9 February 1968). It took world but to change it. So I don't want more people were won over. In the end another five years of a losing war before to focus this talk primarily on the even Nixon and Kissinger saw the light the American ruling class in general objective factors, military and econom and they pulled the U.S. out of Vietnam; accepted that line. ic, which caused U.S. imperialism to And that was the end of the war. The "doves" like Kennedy and withdraw from Vietnam after ten years Well, it didn't happen that way. U.S. McCarthy were that wing of the of war. Rather I want to focus on the imperialism was driven out of Vietnam, American ruling class which believed subjective factors which crippled the defeated on the battlefield by the heroic that U.S. imperialism would be stronger antiwar movement. Why was the Viet Saigon, April 1975: Victorious Viet Cong tan resistance of the Vietnamese. In January i overall if it cut its 'losses, and I nam radicalization so superficial and so 1968 there occurred what was known as emphasize the term losses, in Vietnam. transient? Basically I want to address flight from U.S. embassy. .\ -:": SEPTEMBER 1981 ;ttoPower irtacists It for rietnam American politics so short antiwar radicals of the '60s deny that the ment. So began an eight-year war which lived. There is another ques question of the Soviet Union is at stake. ended with the defeat of the French in ~ovement tion, really an aspect of that And in Afghanistan and Poland-the the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu. 'larger question. If in the early two situations are very different-they As French imperialism 'became pro '70s tens of millions in this find themselves on the imperialist side of gressively weaker, U.S. imperialism country wanted to pull out of the barricades. One question it is moved in even before the war ended. In relations with Russia, improved rela Vietnam no matter what, tens of important to address is why the tens of the last years of the war the U.S. tions with China would. guarantee that thousands supported a victory of the thousands of young radicals who financed about a third of French there would be no more Vietnams. Communists over the U.S. forces. And supported Vietnamese Communism military expenditure in Indochina. When Brezhnev visited the U.S. in 1973 that was something new. Writing about against their own imperialist state have More ominously, during the battle of a few months after the withdrawal from the climate of opinion when he entered today found their way back into the Dien Bien Phu, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Vietnam and said that the 25 years of the White House in 1969, Henry liberal wing of the U.S. imperialist Cold War were giving way tQ.A...new era Kissinger had this to say: camp. of cooperation between the two coun "The hitherto almost unanimous con viction that the Cold War had been Origins and Nature of the War tries, he was telling the American people caused by Soviet intransigence was what they wanted to hear. Not because challenged by a vocal and at times However, before! we can discuss the they suddenly loved Russia, but because violent minority which began to insist nature of the antiwar movement here, they understood that an aggressive anti that it was American bellicosity, Ameri we have to discuss the nature of the war can militarism and American economic Soviet foreign policy led to warand they imperialism that were the root causes of there. The Vietnam War, actually the were sick to death of war. international tension." second Vietnam war, grew directly out But things changed. With the fall of T-- White Ho,.e.. Years (l979.)·~ " of the defeat. ofllf,fench.col,Qnialis1ll by Saigon in 1975 one sees a rising line of Well, where are all these people now. the Stalinist Viet Minh. In World War II anti-Soviet bellicosity on the part of the that we need them? Where are all the the French were driven out of Vietnam American government. After the Ango anti-imperialists of yesteryear? They're by the Japanese, who occupied the la war of 1975-76 Washington dropped not dead. They were very young people country. Later the Japanese were the term "detente" from its official at- th.e time. Yet they are nowhere to be defeated by the Americans and pulled diplomatic vocabulary. Carter came seen today. At the May 3 PAM [Peo out of Vietnam in 1945, leaving a power . into office intent on overcoming the vacuum. The Stalinists led by Ho Chi "Vietnam syndrome" and his "human ple's Antiwar Mobilization] rally, which rights" campaign was a very deliberate was promoted as the beginning of a new and largely successful effort to re antiwar movement, not a single speaker establish the moral authority of U.S. denounced U.S. economic imperialism imperialism, that is, to re-create the as the root cause of violence and the image of the "free world vs. Communist threat of war. Not a single speaker totalitarianism." Then we have the defended the Soviet Union in any w.ay, election by a substantial majority of a shape or form. Quite the contrary, new president who is an unrepentant whenever we show up at one of these El Salvador demonstrations with the Vietnam hawk and wants to wipe out Ta Thu Thau, Vietnamese the "humiliation" of Vietnam by waving slogan, "Defense of Cuba and the USSR Begins in EI Salvador," we get red Trotskyist leader murdered the red, white and blue over mountains by Ho Chi Minh's Stalinists of corpses in Central America. And he is baited, we get Reagan-baited, they call In 1946. At left, Trotskyist undertaking an arms buildup far greater tile cops on us, they go absolutely ape. press of the 1930s. than the military buildup in the Vietnam One of the ways of looking at the War. present Cold War situation is that it has A key question we must address is three hot fronts-El Salvador, Afghani why was the "Vietnam syndrome" in stan and Poland. On El Salvador the Minh, who were the largest but by no Staff seriously proposed, and then Vice UPI means the only force in the country, President Richard Nixon agreed with sought to fill the power vacuum, the proposal, to use nuclear weapons declaring themselves the government. against the besieging Viet Minh forces. Their purpose, however, was not.to However, Eisenhower thought that such overthrow capitalism or even to liberate a drastic action might lead to war with the country from French imperialism. China and/ or the Soviet Union and that Rather they sought to work out a neo risk wasn't worth taking. So Western colonial deal with the French, who were imperialism felt it had to reach a preparing to re-invade. compromise with the Vietnamese Vietnam was one of the few countries Stalinists. on earth where the Trotskyists actually That compromise was achieved at the had a mass base. In the revolutionary 1954 Geneva conference. When the Viet situation of 1945 the Trotskyists, in bloc Minh went into the Geneva conference, with certain nationalists, led a workers' they controlled almost all of northern insurrection with the purpo~e of prepar Vietnam and-most of southern Vietnam ing the masses to resist the reconquest of and their allied forces controlled Laos the country by the French. This insur: and Cambodia. When they left the rection was suppressed 'by the Stalinists conference, they controlled only North along with whatever British and French Vietnam, which quickly became a troops were on the spot. Following this, deformed workers state. The imperial the historic leadership of Vietnamese ists controlled South Vietnam (the Trotskyism was largely murdered. country was partitioned), Laos and On that basis Ho Chi Minh worked Cambodia. out an agreement by which the French One of the main reasons the Viet namese masses lost at the negotiating Ink rolls Into presidential palace . ... Panic-stricken CIA flunkies scramble for last army was allowed to return. Needless to say, once the French army came back in table what they had won on the force, it turned on the Stalinist govern- continued on page 8 ;-,-.~~- / 8 YOUNG SPARTACUS tion led largely by old Viet Minh cadre. insurrection against a weak neo workers and peasants government. The Hanoi Stalinist regime did not colonial bourgeois regime in which the WeU, I suppose the implicit program of Vietnam ... encourage, in fact discouraged, this imperialist army came in to suppress the early antiwar movement was a (continued from page 7) insurgency. But the Diem regime was so that social revolution. Certainly no one doctoral candidates' and street gangs' battlefield was the pressure of their universally unpopular,·so weak that the will argue "that when the V.S. forces government. great-power allies, Russia and China. insurgency gr~w and the Hanoi bureau pulled out in 1973, South Vietnam In ]966 Isaac Deutscher gave a The motives of the Kremlin and Peking crats figured that if they didn't domi thereby attained national liberation. In speaking tour in the V.S. And he made were somewhat different, which had a nate, it would grow out of control one sense one can say that national some astute comments on the left from significant portent for the future.· The altogether. So in 1960 the Vietnamese liberation was achieved two years later his own grounding in the East European Soviet bureaucrats were not especially Stalinists set up the National Liberation when the North Vietnamese army proletarian socialist movement. Now, concerned- with what happened in Front (NLF) in the South. smashed the V.S. puppet regime, Deutscher was not hostile to the New Indochina as such. Rather they wanted As the insurrection grew and since the leading to a deformed workers state. Left. Quite the contrary, he welcomed good relations with Western imperial local state apparatus was too''l'Ieak to However, the false notion that the the leftward motion of the young ism on a global scale and were willing to crush it, the V.S. armed forces were Vietnam War was a struggle for national intelligenfsia in the imperialist heart sacrifice their Vietnamese comrades to gradually built up,· reaching 50,000 in self-determination played an extremely land. In the most pedagogical way he that end. The Chinese Stalinists, on the early 1965. In eady 1965 the V.S. began important role in the V.S. antiwar tried to nudge them toward proletarian other hand, tended to regard Southeast' the terror bombing of North Vietnam, movement. It enabled many left liberals socialism. But at times the intellectual Asia as their own sphere of influence. not, as was claimed at the time, to force to· demand the withdrawal of V.S. arrogance and elitism was too much They did not want a strong Vietnam, the North Vietnamese army to withdraw troops or even to support the Viet Cong even for Deutscher and he lashed out. even, or perhaps especially, a strong from the South. In 1965 the North without facing the question of social Something he said to the 1966 Socialist Communist Vietnam. This made them Vietnamese army wasn't present in the revolution, of communism versus capi Scholars Conference in New York will even more conciliatory toward the South in any significant numbers. The talism. In this way the mainstream give you a sense of the political ethos of imperialists. At one point when Chou V.S. bombing was to force the North antiwar movement never broke from the the antiwar movement at the time: En-lai proposed that the' southern Vietnamese leaders to use their political ideological framework ofliberalism, but "Do you really take such a contemptu border of North Vietnam be moved ous view of your working classes that ... \,.~ you think that you alone are so sensitive north a few hundred kilometers, the or so noble as to be dissatisfied with this head of the Viet Minh delegation, Pham degrading society and that they cannot Van Dong, was so enraged that he find it in themselves to be dissatisfied? stalked out of the room. Do you really believe they are so much more prone, and by nature conditioned, After 1954 what happened in to be corrupted by the meretricious American-dominated South Vietnam? advantages of . this war-flourishing capitalism than you are?" As a result of the present Polish crisis, -"On Socialist Man" in we've been having to argue among self Marxism in Our Time (1971) styled Marxists that the Roman Catho Well, most of his audience did in fact lic church is not on the side of the believe just that. angels-that it is a reactionary institu On another occasion Deutscher tion and formidable ally of V.S. looked at his audience and said some imperialism. And that truth is nowhere ~ .,~'1 thing like this: "You're all nice boys and more evident than in Vietnam. Because girls and I know you mean well, but I Vietnam was long a French colony, a %; would ·trade all of your teach-ins, all of section of the native ruling class, the your sit-ins and all of your demonstra most pro-imperialist section, converted tions for just one dock strike against the to Catholicism while the religion of the war." masses remained Buddhism. So when The question was not simply that the -V.S. wanted a reliable anti . strikes are a more effective tactic than Communist dictator, it chose the per , ." ..... demonstrations. It was how the antiwar sonal protege of New York's Cardinal movement polarized American society . Spellman, Ngo Dinh Diem, whose . ~~~ Because the movement saw itself and brother was archbishop of Saigon. One My Lai massacre, 1968-Reagan calls imperialist butchery in Vietnam "a was generally seen as a movement of of the main forces driving the U.S. nobfe cause." -' petty-bourgeois moralism, many people under John F. Kennedy into the who did not support the war still Vietnam War was the American Catho influence to liquidate the insurgency in rather condemned the V.S. government the South. But at that point the for violating its own professed demo despised the peaceniks. Right-wing lic hierarchy, which literally had its man demagogues like George Wallace were in Saigon's presidential palace. (A few insurgency had reached such a level that cratic principles. - the Hanoi Stalinists probably couldn't Closely related to this was a strong able to take advantage of this resent years later when Di~m became too much ment: The ]968 Wallace presidential of an embarrassment, the CIA had him have called it off, even if they had tendency in the antiwar movement to wanted to. So the war went on for the deny or at any rate to underplay the campaign was not simply based on pure assassinated. But that was under Lyn racism, pure national chauvinism don Johnson, who was a Southern next ten years. military role of the North Vietnamese It's important to get a sense of the army. After the 1968 Tet Offensive the centrally, but not entirely. Wallace was fundamentalist Protestant. So score one able to tap into the resentment of many for the Reformation.) scale of American atrocities in Vietnam, brunt of the fighting was borne by the important among other reasons for North Vietnamese regulars. It was the older white workers against these. The Diem regime immediately began understanding the temper of the antiwar North Vietnamese army which made the pampered, privileged, snotty peaceniks, a mass terror campaign against the movement here. Most of you have final offensive against'the Saigon regime who didn't have to fight anyway since thousands of old Viet Minh cadre in the .probably seen the movie about El in 1975, the Viet Cong irregulars playing they had 2-S student deferments, who South who had liquidated their armed Salvador, Revolution or Death. Maybe a distinctly subordinate role. But even in had never done a day's. work in their forces and laid down their arms. During you found it harrowing. Revolution or the last years of the war there was a lives and who were utterly contemptu the long war against the French the Death is a light comedy compared to marked tendency among V.S. antiwar ous of everything ordinary working peasants had seized much of the land any TV news report during the Vietnam activists to speak of the NLF or Viet people believed was important. from the old landlord class. The War. Every day for eight years you Congo It was one thing to support counterrevolutionary Diem regime at Of course, a few years later after the would turn on your TV set and see something called a National Liberation impact of the French May '68 events tempted to sieze back this land, giving it massive terror bombing; V.S. soldiers Front; it was quite something else to to its own officials, many of them many of these same student elitists, like setting fire to defenseless villages; support a Communist state against Carl Davidson, became the most ex former landlords. Fortunately for us, thousands of refugees, many burned by one's "own" government. there was significant resistance to treme workerists, pandering to the most napalm, being driven into concentration backward prejUdices. Many of the same Diem's reactionary regime and the camps~ The V.S. killed two million out people who in the mid-'60s condemned beginning of a peasant-based insurrec- The Antiwar Movement and of 40 million Vietnamese and most of Petty-Bourgeois Elitism the white working class as hopelessly these people were not kille~ in battle. rlfcist in the early '70s actually joined These were defenseless people killed by Now we come to the American with racist vigilantes in opposing school the terror bombing North' and South, antiwar movement. It is fairly well integration in Boston, Louisville and many died of drowning when the dykes known that the antiwar movement elsewhere. As comrade Lenin said, the were bombed, many died of disease and began and to a large extent remained a only thing stable about petty-bourgeois starvation. What the V.S. did in student-based movement. What is radicalism is that it is unstable. Vietnam was quite comparable to the perhaps not so well known today is that Nazi war atrocities. You'd better under- the antiwar radicalization, especially in The Draft: You Will Go! stand that. . its early stages, was associated with There were two important miscon intellectual arrogance, snpbbism and Petty-bourgeois moralism was not ceptions about the nature of the Viet moralism. It's not merely that the only an ideological posture but affected nam War in the V.S. antiwar move antiwar radical of the mid-'60s ignored ment. The war was seen as a national the working class; they were openly Available Now! liberation struggle waged by South contemptuous and even hostile toward Documents of the SL's Vietnamese guerrillas. It was never it. Their basic ideological posture was revolutionary intmvention during the essentially a national liberation struggle that the white American working class Vietnam war years. and while it began as a guerrilla was hopelessly racist, hopelessly chau insurgency in the South, it did not end vinist, hopelessly corrupted by the fruits Spartacist that way. The Vietnam War was not a of imperialist plund~r, in short, hope Bound Volume case where the population rose up less. There was ,a rejection of traditional No.1 against a foreign colonial army in order (Old Left) proletarian socialism and the Spartacist Issues 1-20 to achieve an independent state. It was presumption that the new revolutionary February -1964-July1971 Make checks payable/order from: fundamentally.dissimilar to, the Algeri vanguard would be student youth, who $2S.00 Spartacist Publishing Co. an or Angolan wars of independence or were supposedly above the mundane 1377, the present conflict in Namibia. South interests of the consumer .society, and Order from/make checks payable to: Box GPO Spartacist Publishi ng Co. New York, NY 10116 Vietnam' was an independent state. black rumpen youth, who were suppos Box 1377 GPO, NY, NY 10116 What happened was a peasant-based edly below it. You've all heard of a SEPTEMBER 1981 9 the activities of the antiwar movement. One of the ways it did this is particularly Iran ... relevant today when the draft is once (continued/rom page 2) Free Anti-Khomeini more on the agenda. One of the main political bloc with the Mujahedin; and a activities of the antiwar movement in its wing which continues to follow the Protesters! early stages was organized draft heroic but primitive guerrillaism of hunger strike to protest Khomeini's dodging, dignified by the term "draft On August 5, 67 Iranians, mainly Ashraf Dehghani. Peykar has a position mass executions in Iran. The six-day resistance." Behind this was something students, were arrested in an early on the Iran-Iraq war which approxi hunger strike culminated in a march very characteristic of the New Left, that morning police raid at a home in mates Leninist revolutionary defeatism, on the United Nations the day before is, a lightminded attitude toward the Englewood, New Jersey. Seized but their anti-Sovietism is equaled in the raid. As of August 19, all 67 were bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie is not without a search or arrest warrant, Iran only by the IRP. But no matter how they refused to give authorities their still . imprisoned and had resumed going to let its armed forces be dodged eclectic or confused, all these groups away from it. If a majority of people names and addresses, fearing repri their hunger strike in protest (New share the two-stage methodology. sals against their families in Iran. The York Times, 20 August). Those who refuse to be drafted, this is called a At the same time, the Iranian left is revolutionary situation. In the absence group 'Yas taken by the INS to a cannot (or refuse to) present proof of agnostic or rejects the Leninist van Federal Detention Center in Otis legal status face deportation hear of such a situation someone who guard party, substituting instead capitu "resists" the draft goes to prison, he ville, New York where they were ings, and if deported to Iran, they lation to the backward consciousness of initially held on 520,000 bond each. face death before the mullahs' firing becomes a fugitive on the run, he ceases the Iranian masses. In 1979 Khomeini to be a functioning member of society. The Iranians had been among 200 squads. No Deportations! Free was overwhelmingly popular-if only Mujahedin supporters waging a Jailed Iranian Protesters! So draft "resistance" was by its very because the shah was so widely nature restricted to a small number of detested-and this is still used to justify footloose petty-bourgeois youth. It was the Iranian left's criminal prostration to shatter the chains of imperialist Iran and to offer a positive alternative to not a real option for working-class before the ayatollah. Today, of course, domination ~nd feudal backwardness as imperialist domination and Islamic youth, even black ghetto youth, who his reactionary regime is the recognized it struggles for its own state power-the reaction. As one of several Iranian were overwhelmingly hostile to the war. oppressor of the working class, the perspective of Trotsky's permanent comrades who recently joined our What working-class youth is going to peasantry and the national minorities. revolution. In Iran Trotskyism has been tendency wrote: rip up his life and spend the rest of his In contrast to the behavior of the hideously besmirched by the supporters "The bitter truth is that Khomeini is days in Canada? No offense meant to Iranian left, a revolutionary vanguard of the United Secretariat, especially the doing what he promised to do. When, in the Toronto comrades, but this is not an party has the responsibility to lead-to followers of the American Socialist line with the anti-Marxist theory of appealing prospect. What working-class two-stage revolution, the left supported tell the truth no matter how Workers Party, the HKE. Hailing the Islamic reaction, the Spartacist tenden youth was going to hide out in some pad unpopular-rather than tail the inevi veil and lauding the "Islamification" of cy was saying that there isn't any anti in Haight Ashbury, even assuming he table shifts in the mood of the masses. the universities, these reformists who imperialist bourgeoisie and so there is could find it? Like tpe Bolsheviks, who were attacked campaigned for "intellectual freedom" not an anti-imperialist bourgeois Secondly, draft "resistance" had the by workers who supported the tsar's war under the shah have proved no less democratic revolution. In the century of effect of ideologically purifying the imperialism, the historic tasks of the in 1914, revolutionaries must be able to servile to Khomeini than the Stalinists. bourgeois-democratic revolution, as army. In the first years of the war the swim against the stream. Precisely Even today, the HKE calls upon their well as national emancipation, cannot draft boards screened radicals out of the because the Bolsheviks swam against "imam" to stop the executions only in be carried out except through a prole army, while most radicals screened the stream in 1914, three years later they order not to hinder the chauvinist war tarian socialist revolution," themselves out. Well, both couldn't - Workers Vanguard No. 287, were able to lead the war-weary masses with Iraq! 14 August have been right. in the greatest revolution in modem That the iSt could see the threat One of our early fights for a working history. inherent in Khomeini while the Iranian Any serious leftist who doesn't want class orientation in the antiwar move Counterposed to the two-stage revo left blindly tailed the mullahs was no to condemn the Iranian proletariat to ment was our fight against draft lution is the perspective of the proletari lucky guess. The Trotskyist program of yet another defeat must turn to the dodging. In 1967 we presented a at, led by its class-conscious vanguard, permanent revolution allowed us to politics and program of Trotskyism document to the SDS national conven mobilizing the oppressed toiling masses correctly analyze the unfolding reality in embodied in the iSt .• tion entitled "You Will Go!" (repro duced in Spartaeist No. 11, March April 1968). At that time it was a We called for a servicemen's union workers to "choose": layoffs, pay cuts, of the black proletariat, can be the damned unpopular position to take. We based on an antiwar.cand anti-militarist or tax hikes, Solidarity House, anxious motor of revolutionary struggle in said, if drafted, you will go into the program. We opposed low-level econo to "save" Detroit for the bosses, has its America or its counterrevolutionary army, you will obey legal orders while mist organizing around gripe issues, own "solution": economic warfare model of racist destruction. Whether exercising your constitutional right to while at the same time warning against against the auto workers of Japan, Detroit's working people fight each express your views on the war to your adventurism in what was the core of hoping the Japanese can be pressured other or fight together against their fellow soldiers. We also warned that the U.S. imperialist state power, even if it into developing a product as inefficient common enemy-the racist, imperialist army is not a campus and that the kind was becoming demoralized. and expensive as an Imperial. And if ruling class-depends on the struggle to of shenanigans you can get away with at [TO BE CONTINUED] economic warfare doesn't work, there forge a revolutionary leadership in Columbia or Harvard will land you in are other kinds. Detroit and throughout the world, the stockade muy pronto in Fort Bragg. Of course the reformists who call Here in Detroit we see the crisis ofthe Around 1969 the situation as regards Detroit ... themselves socialists have their "solu entire capitalist system most starkly the army had changed somewhat. The tion": guns vs. butter rhetoric and "tax revealed, most advanced in decay, most army reversed its policy and began (continued/rom page 12) the rich" schemes. Always the same plea anarchic in irrationality, most painful in drafting known radicals. There were for the capitalist state to reform itself social consequences. Detroit's skilled simply too many of them. At the same defend Detroit would be felt from here to Washington, .And you can bet there and "shift its priorities." "People Before proletariat would be the most valuable time many soldiers became radicalized Profits," they say, But you don't have to resource of a rational society-the class as a result of their experience in won't be any more Klansmen burning crosses in our backyards. be a socialist to know that the capitalists that can build a socialist America. Vietnam. So there was a certain amount will never put anything before their We know well that socialist of antiwar agitation within the army The defense of Detroit can't stop at the city limits. Sitdowns against layoffs profits. You just have to live in Detroit. revolution is not just around the corner. itself. The fight to defend Detroit is part of But neither is it some election pipe In this period some of our comrades and strikes against pay cuts could spark a nationwide union offensive to dump the struggle for socialist revolution. This dream, It is the culmination of a struggle and contacts were drafted and they put is not only the historical imperative; in for power-working-class power-in out an antiwar paper called G.I. Voice. the sellout Frasers and get the labor movement off its knees. Detroit it is obviously also the only Detroit and elsewhere, It is to that The editor had a unique military career solution that makes sense. struggle, and to the construction of a in which he never left the island of Saving Detroit? As the U.S. capitalists take America mass workers party to lead it, that the Manhattan. When I gave this educa toward depression and world war, they Spartacist League is dedicated. tional in Chicago, he said, "Well, From the Ren Cen come pro<;lama try to set black and white workers at From this election platform we raise Manhattan was never invaded, was it?" tions of a "New Detroit." The same each other's throats. Racism and race our revolutionary program: For a bankers, auto barons and their Demo war are their perspectives for Detroit's socialist fight to defend labor/black cratic errand boys who have looted this working people. This city, at the center Detroit!_ Spartacist Leagtie/ city now cynically offer plans to "save" Spartacus Youth League it. Mayor Young talks about a Detroit Public Offices "renaissance" with the same purpose Spartacus Youth League Spartacus Youth League that Ronald Reagan talks about the Class Series Bay Area "reindustrialization" of America. Who EI Salvador Weeks Friday, Saturday: 3:00-6:00 p.m. Univ. of California/Berkeley-October 2-9 believes it? When these guys start BOSTON 1634 Telegraph 3rd Floor (near 17th Street), producing "survival plans," watch out. SF State Univ.-September 21-25 Oakland, California "The Fight for Socialism" Phone: (415) 835-1535 The plain truth is that Detroit can't be saved in capitalist America. It's capital Brandeis: alternate Wednesdays, Film showings: Chicago Beginning September 23 Tuesday: 5:30-9:00 p.m. ism that is killing us, This city and its Harvard: alternate Wednesdays, "Revolution Saturday: 2:00-5:30 p.m. working residents are the direct victims. 523 S. Plymouth Court 3rd Floor Beginning September 30 Chicago, Illinois of the vampire capitalists who have bled For more information: (617) 492-3928 or Death" Phone: (312) 427-0003 Detroit for generations. This really is DETROIT Tuesday, September 22, 12-2 pm the motor city, and the auto bosses New York City "Marxism and the Fight Conf. Rm, A-E, Student Union Tuesday, Thursday: 6:00-9:00 p.m. drove the industrial base to hell. The San Francisco State University Saturday: 1:00-5:00 p.m. Fords' boom-bust cycle has finally for Proletarian Revolution" 41 Warren SI. (one block below Chambers SI. busted our city. Alternate Saturdays, Thursday, October 1, 7:30 pm near Church sn New York, NY Beginning September 26 105 Oakes Phone: (212) 267-1025 And what is the capitalists' "solution" For more information: (313) 868-9095 to economic agony and social decay? A University of California/ Trotskyist League LOS ANGELES Santa Cruz of Canada fancy new b\}ilding amid dilapidated Toronto housing, More racist, sadistic cops on "Trotskyism: Friday, October 2, 8:00 pm Saturday: 1:00·5:00 p.m. the streets while they try to strip the Revolutionary Marxism Today" 2000 LSB (Life Science Building) 299 Queen St. W., Suite 502 working people 0< Jur right to armed Los Angeles City College University of California/Berkeley Toronto, Ontario For more information: (213) 662-1564 Phone: (416) 593-4138 self-defense. And a black mayor who is For info. on other events: (415) 835-1535 Henry Ford's yes-man, Young tells ~ ....J 10 YOUNG SPARTACUS but after Carter they were willing to give Reagan ... the Republican right its licks. Many (continued/rom page J) white workers figured Reagan WQuid get victims of the right-wing onslaught. tQugh with black welfare mQthers, take Forty-four percent of unionized voters food stamps away frQm hippie-student pulled the lever for Reagan. And if one types, but WQuid nQt do anything subtracts black workers, wh() knew the particularly bad to. them. Like the air preferred candidate of the KKK would contrQllers, they were in fQr an awful be pure poison, about half the AFL shQck. CIO membership went for the Republi Certainly Reagan has lived up to. his can right-winger last November. How advance billing as a man whose program come so many workers abandoned their CQuid have been written by the wizards traditional support to the Democratic of the Ku Klux Klan. VQting rights in Party? the South, banning jQb discriminatiQn In Carter's last year the inflation rate fQr gQvernment cQntractors, all the reached Latin American banana minimal and even tQken gains of the republic levels, slashing real take-home civil rights mQvement are nQW being pay by 10 percent. One of the main dismantled or are under attack. This is reasons workers couldn't keep up with an administratiQn which is literally and the inflation was that the union bureau quite Qpenly taking milk frQm the crats, to help out their Democratic mouths Qf black ghetto. YQuth to. pay friends in office, clamped wage controls General Dynamics for Trident subma ~1\lJ; on their members. And while living rines. But Reagan cannQt buy nuclear ~41 first-strike capability against the SQviet standards were being decimated by Spirited SL!SYL contingent at July 19 Bay Area EI Salvador demo. Militant inflation, the bottom dropped out of the UniQn just by starving PQQr black revolutionary politics won new recruits to the SYL. economy last spring, throwing millions women and their children. He could out of work. Under Carter the old New throw everyQne in the cQuntry Qff already indicated he intends to. take the rying away as fast as possible. Any talk Deal liberalism became totally bank welfare and scarcely save enQugh money ax to Social Security benefits, the Qnly of an "antiwar movement" which does rupt. The liberals themselves had to. build half a dozen B-1 bombers. component of sQcial expenditure any not center on defense of the Soviet nothing to offer and nothing to promise Despite the savage cuts in social where near large enQugh to. Qffset the UniQn and unwavering opposition to 011 working people except more of the programs, Reagan's runaway military arms buildup. The anti-SQviet war drive wings of U.S. imperialism is just so same. And the same was intolerable. budget spells inflatiQn. This much means dismantling the minimal eCQ much liberal-pacifist hot air. Small wonder then that many distresses the bankers Qf Wall Street, nQmic security prQgrams the American Having betrayed the Central Ameri workers viewed the Republican opposi who. are demanding the president stQP wQrking class WQn thrQugh the mass can working masses for the sake of a tion as the lesser evil. Reagan de paying fQr his neutrQn bQmbs and cruise struggles Qf the 1930s. bloc with the "liberal" wing Qf U.s. nounced Carter for trying to cure missiles by running the printing presses. imperialism, the PAM refQrmists are For example, one little-publicized now turning their attention to workers, inflation through unemployment and The influential capitalist organ Business provision of the new budget effectively blacks and other oppressed minorities at said he would not do this. Having Week (31 August) states bluntly: "The does away with extended unemploy learned something from the Goldwater $37 billion cuts in the fiscal 1982 home. An "All-People's Congress" ment insurance benefits after 26 weeks. scheduled for October under PAM's debacle in 1964, he solemnly pledged budget-painful thQugh they were-are One laid-off Michigan machinist ad auspices calls Qn "all the people who not to touch SQcial Security entitlement simply nQt enQugh to eliminate the mits, "I voted for Reagan because I have participated in the thousands of benefits, which wQrking people have inflatiQnary impact Qf federal spend believed he'd be the best one to get me past protests for social justice" to "unite paid for all their lives. Not that many ing." And so. it insists Qn "the absQlute out of this unemployment line." Then he around one common program." Just workers really believed Reagan's cam necessity of mQre majQr cuts in federal adds in the spirit of gallows humor, whose CQmmon program PAM seeks to paign promises to. cut inflation to the spending." But where are these mQre "Looks like he's going to do it, too" bone while achieving full employment, majQr cuts to. come frQm? Reagan has (New York Times, 25 August). As unite all people around is no mystery. wQrkers like this, driven by economic AlthQugh the bourgeois endorsements for the All-People's Congress are slim desperation, tum hard against Reagan (just the Abzug/O'Dwyer/Conyers ism, the union bureaucrats and their gang), the prQgram is just as tailored to reformist hangers-on will once again try' Drop Charges Against the "liberal" wing of the U.S. ruling class to sell the Teddy Kennedys and the Fritz as in the El Salvador protests. Mondales as "friends of labor" or at any The PAM reformists' opposition to Draft "Resisters"! rate as lesser evils. class struggle abroad or at home is The Justice Department an 79, February 1980). Thus we support For Workers Revolution, Not demonstrated anew by the air control nounced July 20 that it is proceeding compulsory military service in the Popular frontism lers strike. Just as they opposed the with the "investigation and prosecu Soviet degenerated workers state, elementary demand for military victory tion" of 134 young men who have not whose nationalized property and The reformists who long to collabo to the Salvadoran leftist insurgents, so registered for the draft. The imperial planned economy are an historic gain rate with bourgeois liberalism against they now oppose the elementary de ist army needs its cannon fodder and for the world's workers. We answer Reagan whetted their popular-frontist mand for solidarity strikes to shut down now Reagan plans to use the cops the social democrats' concern for a appetites earlier this year in the protests the airports. Instead they go along with and courts to whip the estimated "strong national defense" of the U.S. around El Salvador. Kowtowing to such the do-nothing policy of the labor 360,000 who haven't registered into with the call for unconditional Democratic Party luminaries as Bella bureaucracy. In an article on the line. To these outrageous prosecu military defense 0/ the USSR. Abzug, John Conyers and PaulO'Dwy PATCO strike in Workers World (21 tions the Spartacus Youth League er, the People's Antiwar Mobilization August) Sam Marcy maintains that the The SYL takes a stand against all (SYL) answers, "Drop all charges! (PAM), a vehicle of Sam Marcy's key to victQry is to build the AFL-CIO . forms of race, class and sex privilege, Not a penny. or a man for the Workers World Party/Youth Against prQtest in Washington of September 19 opposing student deferments and imperialist armed forces!" War and Fascism and the pro-Moscow (more than a month after the strike demanding non-exclusion of women Unable to provide jobs and educa Communist Party (CP), went to great began!): "The first step by the AFL-CIO from the draft. Failure to do so, as in tion to working-class and minority lengths to oppose the elementary de is to redouble its own efforts for the the case of the reformist Socialist youth, the U.S. rulers offer instead mand for military supPQrt to. the leftist Sept. 19 demonstration .... This is how Workers Party oung Socialist Alli "today's action Army" -a "career" as IY insurgents in El SalvadQr. In order to. P A TCO can win." This demonstration, ance, reflects adaptation to tbe petty hired guns, napalmers and torturers appeal to the mQre "enlightened" wing called against Reagan's massive cut bourgeois anti-draft milieu. Unlike for imperialism's world-wide Murder Qf U.S. imperialism, PAM and the CP backs, is intended by the labor tops as a the liberals and reformists, the SYL Inc. The tiger cages, strategic ham begged WashingtQn to withdraw its pressure tactic on behalf of the Demo lets, "Phoenix" programs and the also opposes the existence of the so support to the blQody SalvadQranjunta cratic Party opposition. blood of a million Vietnamese called volunteer army which draws and bemQaned the prospect Qf "another Here Marcy's reformism incidentally exposed for all time the cynical lie of its recruits largely from the ranks of Vietnam." Unable to tolerate the call for goes beyond merely tailing the Meanyite the imperialists to stand for "democ impoverished black youth desperate "Military Victory to the Leftist Insur bureaucracy. Displaying incredible for a job. racy." If the masses of American gents" raised by the Spartacist legalist cretinism, he actually calls on youth are not today consciously anti Candidate Reagan claimed to organized Anti-Imperialist Contin the American judiciary "to show their imperialist, neither are they willing to oppose the Carter-initiated draft gents, PAM and the CP resorted to independence from the executive." spill blood for EI Salvador's 14 registration as "unnecessary" and his violence against us, notably in Washing Marcy lectures that, "the CQurt can take Families. "Defense" Secretary recently stated ton, D.C. on May 3 and Chicago on upon itself what is its duty, to declare the While defending those who refuse Reagan's beliefthat" ... resuming the May 3D, when they used the notorious federal anti-strike laws unconstitution to register for the draft from prosecu draft to meet manpower problems Chicago cops against the Anti al, because they are obviously discrimi tion by the imperialist state, the SYL would lead to public unrest ... " (New Imperialist Contingent. natory against workers"! Why doesn't insists that the "strategy" of individu York Times, 21 July). However, the Particularly galling to these camp he call Qn the Supreme Court to declare al draft resistance is futile. The needs of imperialism's anti-Soviet followers of U.S. "liberal" imperialism capitalism unconstitutional since it too capitalist army cannot be boycotted war drive come first-so Reagan will was our slQgan, "Defense of Cuba, is obviously discriminatory against out of existence. If drafted, SYL push for MX missiles and men. Most USSR Begins in El Salvador." It is workers? members will go into the army as we of the left has capitulated to. the Qbvious that Reagan's policies from El The PAM reformists no doubt hope did in Vietnam-to exercise our imperialist Cold War-from "politi Salvador to South Africa to the Social to get some big-time labor endorsements constitutional right to express our cal solutions" in EI Salvador to Security cutbacks to the air controllers for the All-People's Congress. Not very antiwar views to our fellow soldiers. "Soviet troops out of Afghanistan." strike are integrally linked to the global likely. The present U.S. labor bureauc As we wrote when Jimmy Carter In contrast tbe SL/SYL has inter strategy for a war to destroy the Soviet racy was crystallized through the anti introduced draft registration last vened in anti-draft protests and EI bureaucratically-ruled workers state. red purges at the beginning of the Cold year, "Our opposition to the draft is Salvado. demonstrations with a The reformists like the Marcyites and War in the late 1940s. Throughout the not based on pacifism-but on our program to channel the "unrest" that CP, however, acutely fear that opPQsing world Meany's and Reuther's men have commitment to working-class inter Reagan fears into proletarian revolu Washington's anti-Soviet war drive will served as the advance guard for Wash nationalism and the defeat of U.S. tion to do away with the imperialist surely send anti-communist labor bu ington's export Qf counterrevolution. In imperialism" (Young Spartacus No. war machine once and for all. reaucrats, black establishment figures Latin America the U.S.-run labor and Kennedy / Abzug Democrats scur- operation is so notorious fQr supporting SEPTEMBER 1981 11 bloody rightist juntas that it is common can be fought only by a militant labor terror in Vietnam? Who engineered the Party, the cops and the bourgeoisie as a ly known as the "AFL-CIA." Deeply movement organized and led by intran CIA invasion of Cuba in 1961? Who whole opposed the anti-Nazi rally, so committed' to imperialist .anti sigent proletarian revolutionists. We in reinstituted draft registration, who did the CPo It tried splitting (calling Sovietism, the U.S. labor bureaucracy the Spartacist League/Spartacus YtJuth began the saber rattling over Afghani another rally days before the Nazis will not even defend the basic gains of League are dedicated to building a party stan and who paved the way for today's intended to march) and pulling away the American workers movement. The that will lead such a movement to anti-Soviet war drive? Answer: the from the anti·Nazi rally what few air controllers strike shows this in the victory, a victory over capitalism's Democrats! The CP /YWLL will look in endorsements it could. When all else most dramatic way. What is urgently attacks on the working class, violent vain for one "liberal" who ·has not fa~led, the CP simply boycotted it! needed is a class-struggle opposition in racism and its drive toward 'nuclear embraced the most reactionary, clerical, the unions to the reactionary bureaucra holocaust. • anti-socialist elements in Poland as Want to Fight for Socialism? Join cy, a new leadership which will fight "freedom fighters" against Soviet "total the SYLI Reagan and all the other union busters itarianism." The Abzugs, Kennedys, and will build a workers party to fight YWLL ... Conyers, McGoverns don't join "pro Whether it's defending the Soviet for a workers government. (continued from page 5) gressive" movements-they get the Union, Cuba and the other deformed Against all manner of reformists, the movements to join them! workers states against imperialist at Spartacist League/Spartacus, Youth exploitation and oppression. It means When the domestic reflection of Cold tack; taking a side in a civil war between League has insisted that effective oppo the extension ofthe gains of the October War II exploded in the bloody streets of the rulers and the toilers; fighting th~ Revolution of 1917 to the workers of the sition to Reagan's austerity and union Greensboro, Northr Carolina in the Klan/Nazi threat; building a real anti busting, to Moral Majority social world." broad daylight Klan/Nazi murder of impefialist youth movement whoie reaction and to Washington's fulsome "Remember Bay of Pigs! _ five anti-Klan, trade unionists and struggle is linked with that of the world support to right-wing dictatorships Remember Vietnam! avowed communists, the Spartacist working ~cl~ss-the YWLL has nothing everywhere must be grounded in defense Democratic Party-:-We Know League and SYL organized the only to offer. But the Spartacus Youth of the Soviet Union against American Which Side You're On!" significant working-class protest. The League fights for all these things, as part imperialism. Defense of the gains ofthe CP marched with preachers and liberals of an overall struggle to bring the Russian Revolution also demands a The CP /YWLL has a more sophisti or did nothing at all. But when the Klan working class to pO\'ler in the U.S., in El political revolution against the nation cated class-collaborationist program threatened' to march in the black Salvador and through~ut the world. alistic, parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, than most reformist organizations who proletarian center of Detroit, the Spar- . When Carter foamed at the mouth which is committed to "peaceful coexis aspire to be the brokers of that pie-in . tacist League and militant, mainly black about Soviet "expansionism" in Af tence" with world capitali,sm. It is no the-sky "anti-monopoly coalition." The autoworkers organized a SOO-strong ghanistan, it was left to the Spartacists accident that the Communist Party Stalinist "logic" is that all those who are' counterdemonstration and the Klan did to respond: "Down with the Bride Price! \ USA, one of the most Kremlin-loyal for good things (peace, jobs, equality) not show even one hooded head in the Down with the Veil! Hail Red Army in Stalinist parties in th~ world, has for can be "united" against all those who are Motor City that day.' The major Afghanistan!" When Klan/Nazi terror decades served as a slavish if at times for bad things (war, unemployment, roadblock to the anti-Klan demonstra ists threatened to bring Greensboro to significant supporter of th~ "progres racism). And for the CP, the most tion was none other than "progressive" Detroit and SF, it was the SL/SYL sive" wing of the American imperialist critical component of the "good" side is .' mayor Coleman Young, darling of the which organized labor/black defense to ruling class (read Democratic Party). the "progressive,'" "anti-monopoly" CP, who tIireatened to arrest the anti smash the fascist threat. And today over Reagan reaction cannot be fought by bourgeoisie. The problem is that no Klan protesters. the burning issue of EI Salvador, which supporting the same Democratic Party "progressive" bourgeoisie exists and WheI1 the Nazis threatened to "cele the U.S. imperialists have chosen as which paved the way for the victory of demanding that the struggle against war brate" Hitler's birthday in the tradition today's target in their mad drive toward the right-wing fanatics. It cannot be and racism be tied to the party of\\:ar al union town of San Francisco, it was thermonuclear war against the Soviet fought by selling out the Salvadoran _ and racism-the Democratic Party the Spartacist League along with signifi Union, it is the Trotskyists of the leftist insurgents and the striking U.S. necessarily means betrayal of the cant official trade union support and the Spartacist . League/Spartacus Youth air controllers. The blows which decay struggles of the working class and support of minority, Jewish, gay groups League who have organized hundreds of ing capitalism rains down on the oppressed. who built the 1200-strong rally to stop students and workers for: Military Vic working masses everywhere and its Which party presided over the escala the Nazis. Since strikebreaking SF tory to Salvadoran Leftists! Defense of inexorable drive toward World War III tion of U.S. troops, massive bombing, mayor Diane Feinstein, the Democratic Cuba/USSR Begins in El Salvador!. Stars&Strip~StaliRists:.YWLLc.Courts USSA The_ red, white and blue brochure because they might drive "new leaders" (DSOC) which, though not as visible as YWLL voted with the majority against proclaimed "we will organize students away from U.S. imperialism into the the YWLL, is a political force in the allowing a representative of the USSA and show the country that education is Soviet orbit, as in the case of Castro's USSA. After all, DSOC's national vice hired staff to speak on proposed truly our best defense." Young Ameri Cuba! Latino students couldn't even get chairman, William Winpisinger, is the organizational changes which would cans for Freedom'! No, it's the an a vaguely worded statement defending president of the International Associa affect jobs and working conditions. To nouncement for the United States Cuba past the conference organizers. tion of Machinists (lAM), and he could the YWLL's embarrassment, the staff Student Association (USSA) congress, As typical Stalinists, the nominaHy win the strike in a hurry if he called on walked out in' protest, bringing confer held in Madison, Wisconsin in early , pro-Soviet YWLL showed its true IAM-organized mechanics to stop ence proceedings to a halt! August. Apparently not bothered by colors when it made no, opposition to' servicing aircraft guided by scab con As revolutionary Trotskyists, SYL this pro-imperialist flag waving, the any of the anti-Soviet pronouncements trollers. But since Winpisinger (as well observers at the conference could only Young Workers Liberation League of the conference. Lining up with the as DSOC and the YWLL) doesn't want express relief when it was over. In (YWLL), youth group of the Commu U.S. State Department, the USSA to upset his Democratic Party friends, contrast to the pro-Democratic Party nist Party USA(CP) was there in force. passed a resolution opposing "all his militancy will remain strictly verbal. "student power" politics pushed by the But long having oriented to "progres outside interference in Afghanistan" The USSA conference was not YWLL, our task is to build a disciplined . sive" student bureaucrats in its mostly and they don't mean the CIA! While the without comic relief, however. One youth section of the communist van behind-the-scenes campus work, it was YWLL went along with this support to major dispute revolved around whether guard, the Sp-artacist League. The SYL natural for the YWLL to make a bid for the CIA-backed reactionary Afghan ot: not to' ban alcohol during the has recruited many militant activists the USSA. mullahs, the S partacus -Youth League se,ssions! Fortunately for bor.ed partici., recently on the basis of our positions on Perhaps the YWLL is trying to (SYL) observers sold issues of our press pants, the YWLL lost the vote (in the the fundamental class questions of the face of determined opposition of Illinois recreate the halcyon days of the 1930s with the headline "Hail Red Army!" In day: "Military victory to Salvadoran and Wisconsin beer drinkers). These when its predecessor, the Young Com the midst of Reagan's new Cold War, leftists! Defend Cuba and the USSR! latter-day prohibitionists also found munist League (YCL) ran the Arperican defense of the USSR against imperial Labor /black mobilizations to smash the ~hemselves on the wrong side of the Klan and Nazis! Defend picket lines, Student Union (ASU), a nationwide ism is an acid test for rev9lutionaries-a conference's own labor dispute. The don't cross them!" Join the SYU. organization of left/liberal students. test the YWLL repeatedly flunks. Under the YCL'~ popular-frontist, pro Domestically, the YWLL emulates Roosevelt leadership, the ASU eventu the reformist strategy of its CP mentors, Spartacus Youth League Directory ally supported the second imperialist who for decades have tailed the "pro SYL National Office: Box 3118, Houston: SYL, c/o SL, Box 26474, war, abandoning its earlier antiwar gressive" wing of the pro-capitalist Church Street Station, New York, Houston, TX 77207 radicalism. Today, the YWLL chases American trade-union bureaucracy. NY 10008 Los Angeles: SYL, Box 29115, Los after the student bureaucrats of the These Stalinists seek to channel the Ann Arbor: SYL, P.O. Box 8364, Feliz Station, Los Angeles, CA USSA, but if a genuine radical student worka-s' growing hostility to Reagan Ann Arbor, MI 48107,or call (313) 90029, or call (213) 662-1564 movement developed in this country, reaction back into the tacist, strike 662-2339 Madisoh: SYL. Box 2074, Madison, the YWLL. would try t.o derail it.. just as breaking Democratic Party. The Berkeley/Oakland: SYL, Box 273, WI 53701, or call (608) 255~2342 the YCL did 40 years ago. YWLL's (and CP's) favorite union Civic Center Station, _Oakland, CA New York: SYL, Box 444, Canal 94604, or call (415) 835·1535 Street Station, New York, NY 10013, All the YWLL's "fight the right" anti misleaders, long schooled in class or call (212) 267-1025 collaboration, have ,done nothing in the Boston: SYI., Box 188, MJ,T. Stafion, Reagan rhetoric is simply a cover for , Cambrtdge,MA02139,orcall(617) San Francisco: SYL, Box 11685, support to a more liberal brand of U.S. face of massive layoffs, plant closings 492-3928 San Francisco, CA 94101, or call and Reagan's attack against striking air (415) 863-6963 imperialism. For example, the USSA, Champaign: SYL, PO, Box 2009, backed by the YWLL, is pushing a controllers. Champaign, IL 61820, or call (217) Trotskyist student voter registration drive with the In fact, after a motion in support of 356-1180 League of Canada obvious goal of returning a Democrat to " the controllers was met with booing and Chica9,o: SYL, Box 4667, Main PO., Toronto: Box 7198, Station A, Toron the White House. The main USSA hissing, the conference decided it had' Chicacj'o, IL 60680, or call (312) 427-0003 to, Ontario, or call (416) 593-4138 resolution bemoans U.S. support to too much "important business" to deal Vancou ver: Box 26, Station A, military dictatorships since when they with the P A TCO strike-and the Cleveland: SYL, Box 6642, Cleve Vancouver, B.c., or call (604) 681- are overthrown, "the new leaders will YWLL abstained! This (not surprising) land, OH 44101, or call (216) 621- 2422 5138 - resent U.S. aid to a Government they failure to give even nominal support to Winnipeg: Box 3952, Station B, view as repressive." In other words, P A TCO also rests with the Democratic Detroit: SYL, Box 32028, Detroit. MI Winnipeg. Manitoba, or call (204) Reagan's hardline policies are wrong Socialist Organizing 'Committee 48220, or call (313) 868-9095 589-7214 ,.,.>, ...... ,;5& r~~------~,~M~3~c~"~----~------ 12 SEPTEMBER 1981 Yoang Sparlacas For a Socialist Fight. to Defend Labor/Black Detroitl When the wreckers' ball demolished that Detroit needs urgently, and the one Chrysler's Dodge Main, more than a the bosses fear. building was destroyed. With it the From the lily-white suburbs of Michi livelihoods of thousands of Detroit auto Vote Andrews/Weekley gan to the halls of Congress, the workers were reduced to rubble. An ! Reaganites and the Democrats want entire workforce scrapped. And so it Detroit to die quietly, without making goes in this dying city: 30,000 jobs at too much trouble about it. That is Chrysler, 'wage-cut blackmail for city Coleman Young'sjob. That is the job of and county workers. Black and white both capitalist parties, of all the Demo working-class youth get up each morn cratic city councilmen who want to fill ing with nothing productive to do. And Young's shoes. It is the job of the union now it's starting to look the same to their' bureaucrats and the so-called "leaders" fathers. The Free ,Press runs feature of the black community. stories on how families can learn to live But Andrews and Weekley say that on unemployment and welfare. No taking it lying down is a crime against wonder Detroit workers search the every worker and poor person in "help wanted" section of the Houston Detroit. To the capitalists who say dailies. Detroit doesn't matter because it's just And now Reagan's Cold War budget blacks and auto workers, we say that is grinds down the cities even more. On exactly why Detroit matters. And that is imperialism's way to World War III, why Detroit can be a powerhouse when Reagan and Haig want to stop the labor and black organizations mobilize "Soviet menace" in El Salvador or to win. maybe Angola. Reagan thinks he can Coleman Young says there' is no pay for nuclear aircraft carriers by money. He says Detroit must live on less cutting back Aid to Dependent Chil and less. Well, that's his answer. The dren, food stamps; if that won't work, people of Detroit need to defend he's got plans for Social Security. To the themselves with militant mass action. poor 'and black, the presid.ent says: let , .''\ , ~, ." ,-~~ ~. 'What we need is some' old-fashioned them eat bullets. Schools, hospitals, class struggle, the kind that built the libraries, CETA are down the tubes; SpartaClst CandIdates unions in this city. When the bosses hit Detroit cannot live by tank plants alone. us with mass layoffs, the powerful labor On the fringes of Reagan's Cold War movement should hit back with sit drive, Klan/Nazi terrorists thrive: a for City Councill down strikes. When they try to black black family burned out of its home in mail us with plant closures, the workers Romulus, Cynthia Steel firebombed on should take the plants and hold them for the far west side, Nazi provocations which has the power to fight and win is Board of Directors. ransom. Let them dare try to close an against Jews in Southfield. paralyzed by the union bureaucrats who Candidates for city council Don auto plant' when tens of thousands of workers and blacks are massed outside. So what is to be done? First, working are tied to Coleman Young and the Andrews and Ann Weekley stand for an And the same kind of mass actions can people have to stand up and fight. As the bosses' Democratic Party. So VA W end to groveling class treason. They saying goes, in Detroit we do mind contracts are torn up before our eyes, stand for the beginning of the defense of defend our schools, welfare centers, hospitals. A working-class fight to dying. And we don't mind fighting for the unions do nothing and the open ~abor /black Detroit based on the power our future. But the labor movement traitor Doug Fraser sits on Chrysler's of the union movement. That's the fight continued on page 9 For a Socialist Fight world in order to undo the 1917 Russian Smash the Klan! Revolution when workers expropriated the From Greensboro to Romulus, the to Defend Labor/Black Detroit! capitalist class and formed their own KKK and Nazis have grown bolder, fueled government. As Trotskyists we defend the by economic crisis and Carter/Reagan's social gains everywhere capitalism has been overturned, from Cuba to Vietnam. anti-Communist war drive. If their rule • Free, quality higher education for all! • For unlimited unemployinent compen over working people is threatened, the Our movement has fought for more than 50 Open admissions and free tuition with sation at full union wages! years against the Kremlin's usurpers, their capitalists will turn to these fascist storm stipend! • No to chauvinist protectionism! No to troopers. Labor/black Detroit can defend counterrevolutionary policies and their • Free abortion on demand!-Free quali~ bailouts! suppression of workers democracy. Our itself from these union-buste~s and race ty health care! Pass the Equal Rights • For federal programs to triple welfare! call for the overthrow of the Stalinist terrorists. Amendment! For massive public works under union bureaucrats through proletarian political For Labor/Black Mobilizations to • Keep the s~ate out of the bedroom! control! For low-rent, integrated, quality revolution is part of our uncompromising Smash Klan/Nazi Terrorl . Down with anti-gay laws and cop harass public housing! Build mass transit! opposition to imperialist appetites to • For labor/black defense squads against ment! Abolish all laws against pornogra • Organize the unorganized! Jobs for all: restore capitalism. 30 hours work at 40 hours pay! Penny-for right-wing attack! phy, drug use, prostitution! Down with Defense of USSR/Cuba Begins In censorship! penny COLA in every contract! Not union • Disarm the cops! EI Salvadorl • Abolish gun control!-For the right of • Stop the deportations!-Fullcitlzenship busting "affirmative action~ but special aimed self-defense! rights for foreign workers! union programs for upgrading, recruiting, • No aid to the bloody junta!-U.S./OAS training of min9rities and women! hands off! • Jail the Greensboro KKK/Nazi mur • Liberals' /reformists' "political solution" derers-Free the anti-Klan protesters! • Strike to win!-For labor solidarity! ~ Fight the Layoffs! Bust the union-busting president-defend means a bloodbath! air traffic controllers' strike! For t'he right • Military victory to Salvadoran leftists! Militant labor struggles of the 1930s Fight the Moral Majority! to, strike for all government workers! • Stop the imperialist provocations over turned Detroit into a union town. Now tens Poland! The anti-busing racists, bible-thumping, of thousands of auto workers are thrown Picket lines mean don't cross! For mass pickets against scabbing! No pay cuts!-No • Dowh with Islamic reaction! No to the bigots and right-to-lifers are no longer the out on the streets with no jobs, no'benefits, fringe., They are in the White House, the givebacks! veil! Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! For no hope. The bankers, auto barons and workers revolution in Iran! courts and both sides of the aisle in Democratic Party politicians are turning • Oust the bureaucrats! Break with the • Smash Zionist terror!-For Palestinian Congress. They want to take away black Detroit into a poverty town. What we need Democrats!-For a workers party to fight and Hebrew right to self-determination in a people's right to vote, black children's right are the militant tactics ofthe 1930s, but this for a workers government! socialist Near East! to education, women's right to abortion. time with the leadership to fight all the way Fight the War Drive! • Smash apartheid in South Africa! For For Working-Class Defense of to socialist revolution! international labor action in defense of Democratic Rlghtsl For Sit-Down Strikes Against Mass Reagan/ Haig are hell-bent on black trade unions! Military victory to • End discrimination in schools, housing, Layoffsl provoking nuclear war with the Soviet SWAPO-Independence for Namibia! jobs! ~ • Seize closed plants-take it, it's yours! Union. They are capable of blowing up the For African self-destiny!